Beloved,
This is a chapter out of the book, The Story of Grace, by Horatius Bonar that you absolutely have to read. I'm not kidding. This is such a blessing that if you read it, and think about it, you will be filled with a deeper understanding of Grace. What a joy to know that God is on our side.
God be with you this day,
~Al
CHAPTER VIII.
THE OUTLINE OF THE STORY.
Not knowing anything of grace, nor how such a thing could be, Adam fled from God. He was afraid of God, and of his anger, for the hope of forgiveness could not enter his mind. He was ashamed to meet with God, for the sense of unfitness to stand in his presence would possess him. An evil conscience told him that God must now be his enemy, and that he had no favor to look for at his hands. Free love had not yet been made known, and the idea of it could not originate with the creature. It must originate with God. He alone could tell how such a thing could be, and he alone could suggest it to man.
Accordingly, when man fled, God followed. He was eager to escape from God, and to get as far as possible out of his sight. The presence of God had become as terrible as it had once been blessed. God overtook him among the trees. Search was immediately made for sin. It was found upon the man. God began with Adam, for with him, as the head of creation, he had hither to been dealing. This same sin was then traced back to the woman, and charged also against her. It was then traced backward further still, to the serpent. Step by step it was thus tracked out, and laid open to view in all its windings, --a specimen this of God's procedure in the day of judgment, when he shall lay bare all sin, and hold it up to the abhorrence of the universe.
When the fountainhead of the evil had thus been reached, the sentence was pronounced. The search for sin had begun with Adam, but the sentence against it began with the serpent, as the origin of the whole. It seemed a sentence of wrath, but it was truly one of grace. It spoke of death, but life was in it. It was the first ray of light beginning to dawn upon the world, over which man's disobedience had drawn so dark a cloud. It was not spoken directly to Adam, but simply in his hearing, that he may feel that this grace and life do not arise from any good thing in him, but from God's mere pity towards him, and from His desire to undo the evil which had been wrought.
The sentence against the serpent assures us that God has taken man's part against the enemy that had ruined him. Thus much of grace could be seen at once in it. God steps in between man and his seducer, expressing his displeasure against that which had been done to man. "Thou hast done this," are his words of condemnation against the adversary. He then lays the curse on Satan, and predicts his final overthrow, notwithstanding his present victory. This was grace. Still further, he promises a seed to the woman, and this was special grace; for it told her that the sentence of death was not immediately to overtake her. She was to live; and, through her, deliverance was to find its way to the race. Through this seed Satan's ruin was to come. Between the woman and the serpent there was to be no longer friendship, but enmity. They had been companions in sin, accomplices in crime, but they were henceforth to be at enmity. Nay, between the two seeds there was to be deadly conflict carried on, ending in victory to the woman's seed, but not without the bruising of his heel; nay, by means of this very bruising. All this was grace; each word was expressive of some gracious design on the part of God, in behalf of the sinner. God's purpose of grace was thus intimated, though not unfolded.
Yet it was grace arising out of, or, at least, founded on God's hatred of sin. The first words God utters in the ears of man are such as to shew him that, whatever that grace might be, it was grace such as could only reach him in a way expressive of this hatred. Sin was to be treated as an infinite evil, not as a thing which God could pass slightly over, or to which he could be indifferent. Men sometimes speak of grace as if it had its origin in God's indifference to sin. But, at the very outset, God would have us know that this cannot be. Grace can only come forth in the way of recognizing sin's utter hatefulness — a hatefulness so great, that the one way of removing or pardoning sin is by God's taking the treatment of it entirely into his own hands.
And thus it is still. Grace can only be understood when taken in connection with the "exceeding sinfulness of sin," and the entire unworthiness of the sinner. If sin be not altogether evil, and if the sinner be not altogether worthless, then grace becomes a word without a meaning. Hence it is that self-righteousness and grace are totally incompatible with each other; so that, the moment we begin to palliate[1] our sin, in order to obtain forgiveness, we are falling from grace. As soon as we begin to look for some good feeling or deed in us, in order to make us less unfit to apply to God for pardon, we are rejecting grace. When we allow doubts to arise in us on account of the greatness or the frequency of our sins, we are losing sight of grace. When we try to get or to regain peace in any way which supposes that we are less than the chief of sinners, we are misunderstanding grace, and refusing to acknowledge what it must always rest upon—that sin's malignity[2] is unspeakable, and God's hatred of it unchangeable. And this was evidently in the mind of the Lord when he said, "I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." The grace, which he came to announce, was grace which had nothing to do with man in any other character save that of a sinner.
Thus God's gracious character began to shew itself. It was plain that he had now taken the side of man against his great enemy, and thus manifested his grace as distinctly as he did to Israel when he said, "I will be an enemy unto thine enemies, and an adversary unto thine adversaries." He had so espoused man's cause as to place himself between him and his adversary, declaring war against the serpent and its seed forever, but proclaiming no war against man, nay, implying a restoration to friendship, for it was the seed of the woman that he meant to make the instrument of his victory over Satan.
This was much indeed. It was a reprieve at least, if it was nothing more. It suspended the sentence, if it did not revoke it. But it did more than this. It intimated the grace or free love that his bosom contained a free love which seemed re- solved to proceed onwards in the attainment of its object—that would grudge no cost, nor toil, nor sacrifice, in order to its attainment. There was indeed as yet but a dim and partial revelation of grace, but it was enough to shew Adam, that however much God hated the sin that had been done, he had not become the implacable enemy of man, but was willing to befriend and bless him still. Man might still enjoy his friendship, though a sinner,--man might yet taste God's love, though he had made himself so utterly unlovable. He may betake himself to the God that made him, and find shelter beneath the shadow of his wings, nay, gladness in the embrace of his everlasting arms. He need not avoid his Creator, as if there were naught but destruction and terror in his presence. Man had indeed altered his condition, but there was something in God to meet that altered condition. What God had formerly manifested of himself could not meet it; but now he had come down to intimate that there was that very thing in him which this changed state required, and that this thing was not wrath, but GRACE.
This was the first ray of returning light. It was not the sun that was not to rise for ages. Neither was it the morn. But it was the first streak of brightness upon the overhanging clouds. It foretold the dawn, it was the sure forerunner of the sun. The clouds did not forthwith depart —the curse did not leave the earth — man's restoration was not complete. But it was clearly intimated that the process was now begun through which all these would be accomplished. Satan was not to triumph; sin was not to have its way unhindered; God's favor was now made sure. This was enough,—the rest would follow in due time. And what might man not hope for, if God's favor were restored? That would brighten all darkness, and turn all sorrow into joy.
These were the tidings of grace - the story of free love that Adam heard. And news like these were just what his case required. They arrested him in his flight from God, for they told him how much he had mistaken the character of the God he was fleeing from, and they made him feel that his safety lay not in escaping from God, but in returning to him. They made his fig-leaves fall from off him, for they told him of a far better clothing, a covering made by the hands of God. They won his heart, they relieved his doubts, they stilled all his alarms, while they at the same time made him thoroughly ashamed of his sin. They gently drew him out of the thick shades in which he had sought to hide himself from the face of God. Terror and threatening could not have done this; they would only have made him clasp his fig-leaves the more firmly, and driven him further away to hide himself in deeper shades. But this unexpected, yet most blessed discovery of grace, spoke peace to his soul. It told him that God was still willing to be his friend --still ready to welcome him back to his paternal bosom.
Nothing is prescribed for him to do in order to secure God's favor, or get the benefit of the good news. They are made known to him by God. The story of free love is told, or, at least, sketched in outline. He listens,—he sees that it is God himself who is speaking, and that, therefore, there can be no deception. He gives God credit for speaking truly; he believes, and peace re-enters his soul. The story of love thus taught him outwardly by the hearing of the ear, and taught him inwardly, at the same moment, by the Holy Ghost, was all he needed to pacify his conscience and to gladden his heart.
Nor was there any room left for suspicion or doubt. Man seemed shut up to believe and to trust. One would have said that no door for unbelief was left open, and that the difficulty would not be, to believe, but to keep from believing. It was not much, indeed, that was said, but that little was enough to shew Adam that God was altogether such an one as he, a sinner, could trust in. To suspect or to doubt him, then, was to say that there was not enough of grace in him for such a sinner, or that there was not grace of the particular kind he needed. This was, in fact, to cast discredit upon that very revelation of God's character which had just been made.
However briefly the message had been spoken, it left man inexcusable if he persisted in cherishing aught like a doubt. For to whatever extent sin had gone, there was grace made known more than sufficient to meet it. To whatever depth of unworthiness the character of man might be sunk, still there stood God, making himself known in that very character which was fitted to suit even the unworthiest; so that every doubt that might arise from a sense of personal unworthiness was at once answered; nay, it was so answered as to be shown to be, not really a sense of unworthiness in himself, but a disbelief or denial that there was sufficient grace in God to meet that unworthiness. Nay, more, it could be nothing else than pride refusing to owe such a debt to God; and this not so much arising from a feeling of unworthiness, as from the disappointment of not being allowed to present anything of his own goodness to God as a recommendation to favor.
Reader, you have here the commencement of God's story of grace. It is the truest and the most blessed that was ever told. In it there are no exaggerations, no descriptions of fancy. It is all reality the reality of immeasurable love. It is spoken as directly and personally to you as it was to Adam. It is not merely a message to your first parent, out of which his children may ingeniously contrive to extract or pilfer something which does not rightly belong to them. It is a message to you, and on the reception which you give to that message your forgiveness and your blessedness depend.
What reception, then, do you mean to give it? It is God who tells this story of love— will you listen to him, and allow his loving words to drop as the rain, and to distil as the dew? All that he asks is that you would listen. "Hear, and your souls shall live." You have listened to many a speaker, will you not listen to the God that made you? You have listened to many a tale of earthly love; will you not for once, at least, listen to the tale of heavenly love? The tales of earth but vitiate[3] the taste, and enervate the spirit, nay, perhaps, corrupt your whole moral being. This tale has divine healing in its every word. It soothes, it refreshes, it gladdens, and it leaves no sting, no weariness behind. Is it not, then, worth your while to listen? You have heard the outline -- it is full of grace. And if the mere outline be so exquisite, what must be the filling up of that wondrous tale which began to be sketched in Eden, which was told more fully by prophets and apostles, which is still continuing to be told throughout the earth, and yet, with regard to which we may say, that the half remains untold? The "ages to come must tell it.
--Excerpt from The Story of Grace, Horatius Bonar, 1853
[1] to reduce the violence of (a disease), also: to ease (symptoms) without curing the underlying disease; to cover by excuses.
[2] malicious behavior or nature
[3] to make faulty or defective: to debase in moral or aesthetic status: to make ineffective
Comments
Post a Comment