“ Christ furnishes an eternal peace that sustains His people through all the testing times and trials of this life . ”
constancy of the velocity of light. Christ’s words have the charm of ancient history and the freshness of today. They maintain the simplicity of a child and yet the wisdom of God shines through them. His words have about them the softness of a kiss from the lips of love, and yet the force of lightning rending mountains. The most determined criticism has not been able to dethrone Christ as the incarnation of perfect holiness. The waves of a tossing and restless sea of unbelief break at the Master’s feet, but He still stands years later as the Wonderful Counselor. Sinners and unbelievers quite freely admit these things about Christ. They attempt to account for Christ on natural grounds wherever possible. They are very willing to admit Him to be the greatest man who ever lived. But, at any hint of actual deity in combination with His humanity, the unregenerate arise in deter mined protest and violent rejection at such a suggestion. By doing this they by no means solve the mystery. Indeed, they create for themselves an even greater mystery. Christ was in a real sense God as well as man. The Prophet Isaiah said He would be. See again these words of Isaiah 9:6— “ to us a child is bom, to us a son is given; . . . .” Notice that! A child is born; a son is given. Christ was born as a child — a human child. Christ was given as a son — the Son of God. The rest of the verse says “ his name shall be called Wonderful Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father.” If this is true, Christ must have been the world’s greatest deceiver, because He taught that worship was due Him since He was equal with the Father. He insisted that all men should honor the Son even as the Father and He pointed out that He was the way, the truth and the life. He indicated that no one could come to the Father except through Him (John 14:6). He said that He was the light of the world and that those who followed Him would not walk in darkness. He said He was the Word, the Resurrection and the Life. He accepted the title of deity when Thomas the skeptic met Him after His glorious resurrection and called Him, “My Lord and my God.” Jesus did not question this ascription of praise but said in return “ Thomas, because you have seen me you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” To have made the claim Christ made would neces sarily have branded Jesus Christ as the most unprin cipled liar and deceiver ever known in all the history of the world —if those claims were not true. Consider the thousands of lives willingly surrendered for the Christian faith. Have they died for a lie? Did the twelve disciples of Christ—who all died for their Master—die for a lie they had made up about the resurrected Christ? We cringe today at the very thought of calling Jesus Christ a liar or a deceiver. This is because we know that an evil man could not have deceived the people for whom
He gave His very life. At once, the greatest mystery and the weightiest proof of the divine inspiration of the Bible is Jesus Christ. He stands out commendably among all the sons of men unconquered and unconquer able, He is unquestionably the most discussed person in the entire history of the human race. Hardly a month passes without some new book concerning Jesus appear ing in the literature of our day. Whether authors seek to understand Him or refute Him, they still write about Him. There must be something compelling and winning about such a figure of Jesus who can attract, either in love or in resentment, so many people in so many lands around the world. This fact in itself is a witness which cannot be denied. |t is strange indeed that for close to 2000 years, the mystery of the Person of Jesus Christ has been a stumbling block to the very intelligence of the unbe liever. Jesus Christ is the central figure of the world’s history. The world cannot forget Him while it remem bers history. This is because history is His- story. To leave Christ out of history would be like astronomy without the stars or like botany with the flower for gotten. It would be easier to untwist all the beams of light in the sky and to erase one of the primary colors than to eliminate the character of Jesus from the world. But this Christ of history— this Humanitarian— is also the Saviour of the world. He came into the world to save men from themselves; to save them from their sins; to save their souls from the death they them selves merit; to free their minds and. give them health of soul, body and mind. Christ became the Son of man to enable us to become sons of God. He died to make men live, and He lives so that men no more shall die the death of the wicked. Christ was born in the flesh to enable man to be in the spirit. This is why He could say, “ you must be born again.” He came to give us peace—not as the world gives, but His peace is the peace of soul, peace of mind, the peace which passes all human understanding. No one ever regrets coming to Jesus Christ for salvation. How ever, the sinner lives one whole life of regret for his sin. Christ came into the world to be our everything, our all in all. To those who trust in Christ, He becomes the wonderful Counselor. As the Scripture points out, Christ becomes for the child of God wisdom, righteous ness, and power. He furnishes an eternal peace that sustains His people through all of the testing times and trials of life. He can be your Christ in every crisis, your wonderful Counselor, if you trust Him and by faith take Him at His word so that He might have His way with you.
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DECEMBER, 1965
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