Religious Reality: A Book for MenRawlinson, A. E. J. (Alfred Edward John)
Religion
Religious Reality: A Book for Men
Rawlinson, A. E. J. (Alfred Edward John)
Theology, Doctrinal -- Popular works
In Jesus, they felt, GOD was expressed: His relationship to GOD was
unique. They found the Divine in Him as in no other. They knew that
GOD was in that life because He had spoken and acted there. "Through
the eyes of Jesus" GOD looked out upon the world, and in Jesus' love
and purity and yearning for the sinful and the heavy-laden, GOD
Himself became visible. They knew now what GOD was like. GOD was like
Christ. It was His glory that shone in Jesus' face. It was a new
vision of Him when "Jesus of Nazareth passed by." In the grace--that
is, the beauty, the glory and attractiveness--of the Lord Jesus Christ
they saw a revelation of the love of GOD, a love that yearned over the
fallen and the sorrowful, a love that suffered, and through suffering
brought redemption.
But there was something more. It was not simply that in Jesus Christ
GOD had been brought near, so that they felt they knew GOD as never
before. There was in the experience which had come to them more than
simply a Revealer and a Revealed. There was the Spirit which took
possession of them, a transforming inward Power: a Power able to
reproduce in them, by a process of growth from more to more, that
character of Christ in whose lineaments they had discerned the nature
of the eternal GOD Himself. There was a Presence abiding in their
midst, dwelling within them, a Breath of the Divine Life which every
Christian knew: a Presence which brought strength and comfort, power
and love and discipline, and bore fruits of love and joy and peace.
Who or what was it? An influence from on high? Yes: but it seemed more
intimate, more personal than any mere "influence," more indissolubly
one with them, knitting them into a fellowship in which they were
united with the Father and the Son. "Truly our fellowship is with the
Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ." The Spirit which bore such
fruits in them, which brought them into so intimate a fellowship with
GOD in Christ, they recognized as the Spirit of GOD, as the Presence
in them of very GOD Himself. GOD, they felt, was not a Being far off,
an Influence telling upon men from a distance. He was the very secret
of life, "closer than breathing, nearer than hands and feet," so that
each soul was meant to be a sacred "temple of GOD," "GOD abiding in
him and he in GOD." GOD came in the Son, GOD had come also and equally
in the Spirit. The Eternal Source of all things, who was known and
worshipped as the Living One even before Christ came, was made more
fully known in Christ, and now He was still more intimately made known
in the inmost spiritual life of every day.
That was Christian experience. That was the experience out of which
the doctrine of the Trinity arose. It arose out of an attempt to think
the thing out. If we to-day find the doctrine difficult, at least the
experience was and is both simple and profound. And we cannot help
thinking about it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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