David: Psalm 51

Thou requirest truth
In the inward parts:
Not merely on the lips,
Where man may mutter anything,
And seal his subterfuge,
Making it truth for him
And those who hear.
  
Thou requirest truth
When man is truly man:
Down in the depths beneath,
 Where You alone may see:
Man senses but he does not know
That truth is the truth
That You require.
  
I, David, was a man of joy,
Of pleasant power,
Of daily purity.
True, I too was tempted,
But should I fall
Would know I fell
And cry to You for help.
  
When then I fell
And said I did not fall,
When kept within
The hellish sin I did
And made it joy, not sin,
The fires began
That ran into my soul.
  
At nights they burned,
By day they flamed,
Hot coals that dried
Or sweated me
Until the power had gone,
That once I knew
In doubtless joy.
  
When Nathan came
His piercing eyes
Looked to the depths
(His eyes were Yours);
The holy flame
Burned even more.
I was undone.
  
The mercy cried
Was mercy come,
The lava fled
Its burning core,
And I was freed—
The flame was gone
By mercy’s love.
  
The truth required
In inward parts,
The purity
Within the heart
Have come again.
No greater gift
Was ever given.
  
Here then I weep
For grace and sin,
The wasted hour,
The splendid grace:
Both show me truth
Is what I need,
With wisdom.
  
Teach me, then, Lord,
Of sin’s deceit,
The sludge of sin
That full defiles.
Give me the love
Of purity,
The only truth.
  
Now sings my heart,
The heart so pure
The miracle of love
Has made again.
The man destroyed
Is made anew
For purity.
  
I know, dear Lord,
The cost is Yours.
Sin’s suffering
Is mine alone,
But Yours the pain
Messiah takes
Unto the death.
  
Broken I go,
Though healed.
Wisdom I know,
Though foolish.
You have unmasked
The sin that binds,
And set me free.
  
Freedom thus bought
Is freedom prized
And holiness
Is gift most high.
Man breathes eternity
In holiness
And knows You true.
  
This is the wisdom required: 
This is the gift of God 
Set in the inward parts, 
True purity in peace
And holiness in joy.

From The Spirit of All Things, by Geoffrey Bingham, pp.72-74

JESUS—’A GLUTTON AND A DRUNKARD’

Another aspect of Jesus’ ministry by which men were granted the renewal of heart which Jesus demanded was Jesus’ fellowship with sinners and His forgiveness of their sins. We have already noted that this action may properly be included in the miraculous or sign work of Jesus. 

 

Jesus shared table fellowship with sinners, at home and abroad. Admittedly this led to resentment and scandal within the religious (Mark 2: 16, Matthew 11: 19) but met with the sheer delight of the irreligious (Luke 19: 9, Mark 2: 19). Common dining set up a special bond: it symbolised unity of mind, and demonstrated brotherhood. To be invited to a meal was indeed an honour, to participate in life together. Exclusion signified the repudiation of social ties with the excepted person. Shared meals had had a long tradition in sacral ceremonies (Exodus 18:12, 24:11 and I Kings 3: 15), and this sacred character was expressed in everyday life, with the opening blessing uniting the participants in intimate communion, and the concluding responsive ‘amen’.
 

Concern for cleanliness is noted in John 4: 9b, where Jews do not associate with Samaritans. Religious elitism grew up, as the ‘right sort of associates’ were invited to share meals. Obviously the unclean, or sinners were excluded from joining with the ‘righteous’. We see that the ritualistic and moral basis of community were closely linked. Hence publicans, prostitutes, the greedy, dishonest, and adulterers were ‘without the group’.

This social order or structure, Jesus deliberately challenged. This was no mere breach of religious etiquette. Jesus attacked both questions – of the unclean (Mark 7: 17–20) and sinners (Luke 19: 5). He flaunted the most elementary considerations of morality (the Law) as well as purity: contempt(?) for the Law as He breached the directive of Psalm 1: 1, and ritual purity as taught in Proverbs 28: 7, ‘He who keeps the law is a wise son, but a companion of gluttons shames his father’. Surely the God of the Old Testament would not tolerate such action, since ‘he who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous are both alike an abomination to the LORD’ (Prov. 17: 15). But Paul saw that God ‘justifies the ungodly’ (Romans 4: 5), and Jesus’ ministry is the concrete expression of this.

 

John the Baptist had already prepared for this novel activity by declaring the bankruptcy of Mosaic religion, as he called the nation to repentance. He used the classic formula of repentance – conversion, then communion (Luke 3: 10–14). Jesus’ novelty consisted in the reversal of this: communion then conversion. The reign of God had not reduced any of its demands, but now it appeared that contact triggered off deep, dynamic repentance, that conversion blossomed from fresh communion. Whereas the Pharisees chided ‘the sinners’ with the Law, Jesus appeared to place no conditions on these same people.
 

When pressed, Jesus explained that this activity was an essential and integral part of His ministry. He was convinced that since these needy folk were ‘sick’, they needed the ‘physician’, so He went to assist them. Jesus had no hesitation: perhaps some of His disciples were, and were relieved when Jesus defended them (Mark 2:15ff). In this simple activity Jesus saw that the forgiveness and conversion of sinners was at stake (Matthew 21:28–32 and Luke 7:41–43), and that men were reconciled to God, and restored to the family of Israel (so Luke 19: 9). And all this was effected without any real undermining of the moral order.
 

The problem Jesus faced was how to win over the good, the pious Jews. What He gave was no embattled defence, nor superior ‘put down’, but a genuine appeal, seeking to win these folk over. It was a persistent effort to win ‘the righteous’, not humiliate them. This was prophesied in Isaiah 49:6 and Malachi 4:6.
 

Jesus knew that forgiveness effected responsive love. When reproached for such ease of forgiveness and acceptance, He responded that forgiveness produced love, not a renewed hardening and guilt. The sinner found acceptance guaranteed, without any conditions, only by returning home. This is clearly seen in the Parable of the Prodigal in Luke 15:12ff (an opportunity for Pharisees to repent and so rejoin the festive family) where Jesus appeals in response to His condemned activities (Luke 15:1–2). Although Jesus had obvious success – Zacchaeus evidenced a character change in his spontaneous giving, the ‘justified sinful woman’ demonstrated her love with service, and Matthew followed as a disciple – His presence with these people did not guarantee automatic renewal. Jesus ate with Pharisees (Luke 7:30ff and 11:37ff), but since forgiveness is an act of grace, not all desired to accept it. In Luke 15:25ff it means giving up any boasting in self–achievement, any slavish attitude of wage earner before God. Neither of the sons in this parable had lived as sons; they had denied their sonship in Israel, and the elder son rejected (finally?!) the fellowship of the father, together with the forgiveness of his brother.
 

Jesus then, by eating at table with any men, welcomed all to fellowship with the Father, and His brothers.

From Miracles of A Domestic Kind, by Dean Carter, pp. 18-21.

Grace Is Much More Than Sympathy And Pity

The tendency to dwell upon the passive obedience of Christ is but the theological way of expressing the tendency to dwell on God’s sympathy and to ignore His salvation. There is little doubt that the sympathetic tendency is the more popular to-day, and to press salvation in a real sense is to be accused of a reactionary bias to theology. But a God who is merely or mainly sympathetic is not the Christian God. The Father of an infinite benediction is not the Father of an infinite grace.  
 

We are often warned of the dangers of anthropomorphism, especially by those who are preoccupied with the super-personal element in God. But what we need much more to-day is a caution against anthropopathism, or a conception of God which thinks of Him chiefly as the divine consummation of all our human pity and tenderness to man’s mischance, bewilderment, sorrow and sin. A being of infinite pity would not rise to the height of the Christian God. And a religion of far more sympathy than we have yet felt would not be the Christian religion.
 

It is needless to dwell on the preciousness of sympathy. The man who needs none is something less than human; and the man who receives none remains so. But a sympathy which has no help in it mocks us with an enlargement of our own sensitive impotence, which means so much better than it can. And yet a sympathy which could only help would not secure us against the fear that all its help might be at last in vain. It might not reach me, or not my worst need; or it might be arrested in some future by a power more mighty to foil than to help.
 

We must have a sympathy that can not only help but save, save to the uttermost, save for ever, and not only bless but redeem. Nay, far more, we must have, for the entire confidence of faith, a sympathy that has redeemed, and already triumphs in a conclusive salvation. If God, indeed, could not sympathise, He would be less than God. There would be a region, large or small, into which He could not pass. There would be an insuperable obstacle set to Almighty God by a something which by so far reduced His power and resisted His access. He would be a limited being, tied up, as impersonal things are, by their own nature, and incapable of passing beyond it.
 

But all the same, if God were all sympathy, if His divine power lay chiefly in His ability to infuse Himself with super-human intimacy of feeling into the most unspeakable tangles and crises of human life, then also He would be less than God, and we should have no more than what might be called a monism of heart. Even a loving God is really God not because He loves, but because He has power to subdue all things to the holiness of His love, and even sin itself to His love as redeeming grace. A sympathetic God is really God because He is a holy, saving, redeeming God; because in Him already the great world-transaction is done, and the kingdom of His holy love already set up on His foregone conquest of all evil.
 

The great and crucial thing is done in God and not before Him, in His will and not in His presence, by Him and not/or Him by any servants, not even by a son. It is an act of His own being, a victory in His own immutable and invincible being. And to be saved, in any non- egoistical sense of the word, means that God gains His own victory over again in me, and that I have lost in life’s great issue unless He do. God’s participation in man’s affairs is much more than that of a fellow-sufferer on a divine scale, whose love can rise to a painless sympathy with pain. He not only perfectly understands our case and our problem, but He has morally, actively, finally solved it. The solution is for ever present with Him. Already He sees, and for ever sees, the travail of His soul and is satisfied. All the jars, collisions, contradictions, crises, pities, tragedies and terrors of life are in Him for ever adjusted in a peace which is not resigned and quietist, but triumphant and exultant; and nothing can pluck us from His hands.
 

All history, through His great act at its moral centre, is, in God; resolved into the harmonies of a foregone and final conquest. And our faith is not merely that God is with us, nor that one day He will clear all things up and triumph; but that for Him all things are already triumphant, clear, and sure. All things are working together for good, as good is in the cross of Christ and its saving effect. Our faith is not that one day we shall solve the riddles of providence, and see all things put under us, but that now we see Jesus; and that we commit ourselves to one who has both the solution of every tragic thing and the glory of every dark thing clear and sure in a kingdom that cannot be moved, and, therefore alone, moves for ever on.

From The Cruciality of the Cross, by Peter Taylor Forsyth, pp. 58-62.

Bringing Grace and Sin Home by Preaching Holiness

To bring sin home, and to bring grace home, we need that something else should come home which alone gives meaning to both—the holy.

The grace of God cannot return to our preaching or to our faith till we recover what has almost clean gone from our general, familiar, and current religion, what liberalism has quite lost—I mean a due sense of the holiness of God. This sense has much gone from our public worship, with its frequent irreverence; from our sentimental piety, to which an ethical piety with its implicates is simply obscure; from our rational religion, which banishest the idea of God’s wrath; from our public morals, to which the invasion of property is more dreadful than the damnation of men. If our Gospel be obscure it is obscure to them in whom the slack God of the period has blinded their minds, or a genial God unbraced them, and hidden the Holy One who inhabits eternity.

This holiness of God is the real foundation of religion—it is certainly the ruling interest of the Christian religion. In front of all our prayer or work stands “Hallowed be Thy name.” If we take the Lord’s Prayer alone, God’s holiness is the interest which all the rest of it serves. Neither love, grace, faith, nor sin have any but a passing meaning except as they rest on the holiness of God, except as they arise from it, and return to it, except as they satisfy it, show it forth, set it up, and secure it everywhere and for ever. Love is but its outgoing; sin is but its defiance; grace is but its action on sin; the cross is but its victory; faith is but its worship.

The preacher preaches to the divinest purpose only when his lips are touched with the red coal from the altar of the thrice holy in the innermost place. We must rise beyond social righteousness and universal justice to the holiness of an infinite God. What we on earth call righteousness among men, the saints in heaven call holiness in Him.


From The Cruciality of the Cross, by Peter Taylor Forsyth, p.38-39.