August 1931
340
T h e
K i n g ’ s
B u s i n e s s
The Need of Christ’s Suffering O ught C hr ist to have suffered? Was there any commanding necessity laid upon Him to go through what He experienced? Was there any interest at stake of enough importance to justify the humiliation of the cradle and the pang and the shame of the cross ? Or, if there were vast concerns in issue, was there no other way to gain the end? The answer is brief, but it is all-sufficient. Men were sinners, under the condemnation of, the law, helpless and hopeless unless aid should come to them from some source outside of themselves. All the discoveries and advances of science, all the moral progress that the world has made or shall make because of its art and its literature and its political economies, all the new devices and pretenses sought out by infidelity and agnosticism will not alter by so much as a hair’s breadth this one .fact—men were and are, until rescued by the interposition and grace of God, helplessly and hopelessly in the grip of the law which they have broken. Were we to enter into a full discussion of this ques tion of the necessity of the sufferings of Christ, we should find that these factors, along with others, enter into the problem: the character of God, the penalty of the law, the preciousness of the soul, the deep sinfulness of trans gression, and the inadequacy of simple repentance for wrongdoing in the far-off issues of guilt. We condense all these, into a single word, sin. Sin is the fact which undertones the whole sad story of the cross, and it is the hinge on which the necessity of an atoning sacrifice turns. Sin is what brought the Son of God down out of the heavens to tabernacle here in the flesh. Sin is what led Him to walk through all the sorrowing ways of our hu man life. No other way was there—or, at any rate, no other way which seemed so suitable in the estimation of infinite wisdom and infinite love—than this of vicarious suffering. If a man has no sense of sin, does not believe in sin, but thinks what the Scriptures call sin is only a mistake or sort of amiable folly, then he will not be likely to perceive that there was any deep stress of need for the dying of Christ to atone for sin. But if he has some great sense of it and of the mischievous way in which it relates itself to the high welfare of the soul and the character of God and the order and interest of the moral universe, then the necessity for the sufferings of Christ will become clear to his mind. He will be ready to say, “Yes,” to Christ’s own statement that it behooved Him to suffer, that, by suffering, He might open a way of everlasting salvation to all. The Wrong Order The ten spies differed from Caleb and Joshua in their report of the land of Canaan. There are three words here beginning with “G”—the word “God,” the word “giant,” and the word “grasshopper.” Now note, these spies made a great mistake as to the position of these three words. They compared themselves with the people of the land and said: “And in their sight we were as grass hoppers.” If they had compared the people of the land with God, they would have come back, as Caleb and Joshua did, who said in effect: “We have compared the giants with God, and the giants are as grasshoppers.”— F. B. M eyer .
business, friendship—they will be sure to be wrong to morrow? Why not intensify all the pains and perplexities and vexations and burdens of the present moment— severe and trying enough at best—by looking at them through morbid eyes, and then setting the imagination to work to fill the future with sorrows and losses and all sorts of dire calamities? There would be some justifica tion for anxiety were there any good in it, but there is not. Nothing is accomplished by it. The train does not arrive a single minute earlier because a person goes to the station a couple of hours before the scheduled time and makes the long period of waiting seem tenfold longer and more dreary by fancying that the expected friend is surely sick or that the cars are off the track. The forecasting of trouble that may not come never helps anything. It does not reduce the principal on the note that is due. Business is not put on a safe foundation by it. A sick person is not healed by it. The cause of Christ is-not advanced by it. Souls are not brought to Christ and saved by it. Noth ing is so inefficient for good as anxiety. The chief indictment, however, against anxiety is the distrust of God which it implies. A heart filled with the worry which narrows the spiritual horizon and turns the sweet light of the stars into horrible darkness has small place in it for any living and sustaining confidence in Him who notes the fall of a sparrow or who has assured His children that He is ready to take upon His heart all their burdens of care. God has not promised to do everything for us. There are some things which we must do for our selves. But He has promised never to leave or to for sake His own. He has promised that all things shall work together for good to them that love Him. Anxiety is distrust. God has us in His keeping. He knows our needs. He is not watching over the interests of birds and the beauty of lilies and the clothing of grasses and then forgetting all about the necessities of those higher and immortal creatures whom He has redeemed by the blood of His Son. “He who spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?” The things essential to our existence and comfort, which the Gentiles of our Lord’s day were seek ing so eagerly, and which men in our day seek so avidly, are things which our heavenly Father knows we need. Our necessities, our wants, our natural burdens are not sur prises to God. He understands them all, He feels them all. But in the midst of them,He wishes us to trust Him. This does not mean that we are not to be industrious and economical and prudent and forethoughtful. Rational ex ertion in order to gain suitable ends is not denied to us, but is urged and encouraged. The man who quotes, “In nothing be anxious,” and then in justification of laziness or a supine folding of the hands in the presence of ser vices to be rendered and duties to be done, must not forget that the author of this phrase is likewise the author of another: “Diligent in business.” The indifference of neither the fatalist nor of the sensualist has any warrant in the Word of God. “If any would not work, neither should he eat.” But the thing which is condemned and ought to be condemned, and from which our heavenly Father seeks to deliver, us, is the over-solicitude which burdens and benumbs the heart, and which saps energy from brain and hand and makes us forget that God is over us, and that He will provide for all the exigencies of our lives.
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