8 Feb 2024
We have seen how God reveals himself to his people by ‘speaking’ to them through the Scripture. From the moment man sinned, God the Creator began to show himself a God of grace, accepting responsibility to do all that was necessary to restore human beings to himself. In addition to making redemptive provision for sinners, God must speak to them, to teach them his character, aims, standards, and proposals. He must explain what his purpose is for themselves as individuals, and also for the church, the redeemed community, and the whole cosmos, so that they may know his mind at least in principle regarding every issue and situation with which they have to deal, and in which he has to deal with them. Hence the Bible – the revealed Word as we have it – is necessary because of the complexity of revealed truth.
Only as God addresses us directly, and works on and in us in conjunction with his message, can our activity take the form of rational, personal response to himself. Therefore a revealed Word from God to mankind, embracing a wide range of instruction, was necessary from the start. Such a revealed Word cannot avoid being complex if it is to deal adequately with the complexity of human life.
The heart of the knowledge which God seeks to impart is knowledge of the risen Jesus, understood in terms of the triunity of God, incarnation of the Son, the mediatorial office, and saving union with Christ – perhaps the most complex and elusive concepts in the whole history of human thought.
The godly saints of old, knowing themselves to be creatures of thought, affection, and will, and knowing that God’s way to the human heart is vial the human mind, practiced meditation on the whole range of biblical truths as they saw it applying to themselves.
This rational, resolute, passionate piety was conscientious without becoming obsessive, law-oriented without lapsing into legalism, and expressive of Christian liberty without any shameful lurches into license. These dear ones know that Scripture is the unalterable rule of holiness, and never allowed themselves to forget it.
Knowing also the dishonesty and deceitfulness of fallen human hearts, they cultivated humility and self-suspicion as abiding attitudes, and examined themselves regularly for spiritual blind spots and lurking inward evils. They found the discipline of self-examination by Scripture, followed by the discipline of confessing and forsaking sin and renewing one’s gratitude to Christ for his pardoning mercy, to be a source of great inner peace and joy.
Today, we who know to our cost that we have unclear minds, uncontrolled affections, and unstable wills when it comes to serving God, and who again and again find ourselves being imposed on by irrational, emotional romanticism diagnosed as super-spirituality, could profit much from these saints of old.