Faith Is The Victory by Professor E M Blaiklock
MA., Litt. D.
UNEARTHLY LOVE:
Note the rendering of v. 1: "See what unearthly love God has given us that we should be called (as indeed we are) the children of God." The interrogative pronoun here employed means literally "of what country." "Of what country is the love . ..?" asks John. Matthew uses the same word in 8.27:
"And they were astonished, saying, Of what country is this man that the winds and the waves obey him?" "What unearthly personage other words. Hence the suggested
earthly personage . ••” in other words. Hence the suggested rendering.
And indeed, in a world permeated by Christian thinking, the love of God is taken far too readily for granted. Men have always in past centuries found the wrath of God more easy to understand. How truly is the love of God for man the love of the inconceivably great for the insignficant. In pride and self-esteem little man struts upon his planet and forgets how frail he is. Lying beside his sheep under the Judaean stars David sang: "When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars which Thou has ordained, I say, What is man that Thou are mindful of him, or the son of man that Thou visitest him?" David's naked eye could count three thousand stars. Today we number the
galaxies in millions. It might be answered that the mind which comprehends is superior to a whole universe of dead, insensate fires, but it still remains a fact that we inhabit a tiny film of safety, protected by the web of the atmosphere from the deadly waves of space, on the thin rock crust of a fragile ball, spinning through the perils of immeasurable space. How arrogant are those who think they have probed the secrets of all the universe, and who dismiss God because a telescope cannot locate Him. And how daunting is the thought that the great Creator has loved men.
But beyond all man's transience and insignificance is man's unworthiness. The love of God for man is also the love of the utterly holy for the completely unlovely. It was Wordsworth who wrote :
To her fair works did Nature link,
The human soul that through me ran, And much is grieved my heart to think What man has made of man.
He was thinking of the multitude of dead in the Napoleonic wars which had marred his youth. He was thinking perhaps of the festering slums of the industrial cities spreading like a rash over England. He could have added to the thought the vision of the Cross, what man made of the Son of Man, a public spectacle of torment and shameful death, a man of sorrows and of grief, despised, rejected. . . .
What unearthly love indeed that we should be called the children of God. In that privilege goes all that makes life worth living. The redeemed become significant, part of an eternal plan. This life falls into place and is seen in due proportion and in relation to eternity. Robert Ingersoll, whose militant atheism left a mark for evil on nineteenth century America, in an impassioned speech beside his brother's grave cried: "Life is but a narrow vale between the lofty peaks of two eternities. We cry aloud and the only answer is the echo of our wailing." Wiser was the old earl who spoke before the king when Paulinus brought the gospel to Saxon Northumbria. He likened life to the flight of a sparrow from out the stormy dark into the warm firelight of the banqueting hall and out again into the dark. He urged acceptance of a faith which can pierce that darkness.
And it can. Life becomes in Christ the prelude of eternity.
And more. Life on earth is webbed and interfused for the Christian by the life that shall be, for "eternal life," John's deep pre-occupation, is a quality of living as well as a duration. The redeemed person is passed from death to life. It is a present possession, this life which Christ can give, and give abundantly. George Wade Robinson's hymn is not mere lush sentiment, but the present experience of the Christian:
Heaven above is softer blue,
Earth around is sweeter green,
Something lives in every hue
Christless eyes have never seen.
.・・・・・・
Heaven and earth may fade and flee First-born light in gloom decline,
But while God and I shall be, I am His and He is mine.
It is my personal testimony, for what this is worth, that a Christian faith has made life completely worth living. It has illumined my studies. I should have been glad in 1921, if somebody could have assured me that the faith I then timidly embraced would not cabin and confine my life, fetter my thinking, or take away the independence of my mind. I assure any young man or woman who starts today where I started then, that all the best things in life, home, happiness, achieve-ment, flow directly from my faith and the insights it has given.
One of the rewards of life's summit is the backward look.
Struggling up the lower slope one is tempted to find no meaning in the road, no engineering in the toilsome steep. I should have been glad in youth to see what now is visible, the evidence that Perfect Wisdom and Perfect Love, the twin attributes of the Father, can jointly integrate the life of His children, however stumblingly they follow Him. The pattern becomes clear as the years pass, puzzles of unanswered prayer, even the permitted pain and injustice of men fall into place and, indeed,
I'll bless the hand that guided, I'll bless the heart that planned, When throned where glory dwelleth,
In Immanuel's land.