The doctrine of justification by faith-a Biblical truth, and a blessed relief from sterile legalism and unavailing self-effort has in our time fallen into evil company and been interpreted by many in such manner as actually to bar men from the knowledge of God. The whole transaction of religious conversion has been made mechanical and spiritless. Faith may now be exercised without a jar to the moral life and without embarrassment to the Adamic ego. Christ may be "received" without creating any special love for Him in the soul of the receiver. The man is "saved," but he neither hungry nor thirsty after God. In fact he is specifically taught to be satisfied and encouraged to be content with little.
The modern scientist has lost
God amid the wonders of His world; we Christians are in real danger of losing
God amid the wonders of His Word. We have almost forgotten that God is a Person
and, as such, can be cultivated as any person can. It is inherent in
personality to be able to know other personalities, but full knowledge of one
personality by another cannot be achieved in one encounter. It is only after
long and loving mental intercourse that the full possibilities of both can be
explored.
All social intercourse between
human beings is a response of personality to personality, grading upward from
the most casual brush between man and man to the fullest, most intimate
communion of which the human soul is capable. Religion, so far as it is
genuine, is in essence the response of created personalities to the Creating Personality,
God. "This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God,
and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent."
God is a Person, and in the
deep of His mighty nature He thinks, wills, enjoys, feels, loves, desires and
suffers as any other person may. In making Himself known to us He stays by the
familiar pattern of personality. He communicates with us through the avenues of
our minds, our wills and our emotions. The continuous and unembarrassed
interchange of love and thought between God and the soul of the redeemer man is
the throbbing heart of New Testament religion.
This intercourse between God
and the soul is known to us in conscious personal awareness. It is personal:
that is, it does not come through the body of believers, as such, but is known
to the individual, and, to the body through the individuals which compose it.
And it is conscious: that is, it does not stay below the threshold of
consciousness and work there unknown to the soul (as, for instance, infant
baptism is thought by some to do), but comes within the field of awareness where
the man can "know" it as he knows any other fact of experience.
You and I are in little (our
sins excepted) what, God is in large. Being made in His image we have: I within
us the capacity to know Him. In our sins we lack only the power. The moment the
Spirit has quickened us to life in regeneration our whole being senses its
kinship to God and leaps up in joyous recognition that is the heavenly birth
without which we cannot: see the Kingdom of God . It is, however, not an end but an
inception, for now begins the glorious pursuit the heart's happy exploration of
the infinite riches of the Godhead. That is where we begin, I say, but where:
we stop no man has yet discovered, for there is in the awful and mysterious
deaths of the Triune God neither limit nor end.
Thine own eternity is round Thee,
Majesty divine!
To have found God and still to
pursue Him is the soul's paradox of love, scorned indeed by the
too-easily-satisfied religionist, but justified in happy experience by the
children of the burning heart. St. Bernard stated this holy paradox in a
musical quatrain that will be instantly understood by every worshipping soul:
We taste Thee? O Thou Living
Bread,
And long teast upon Thee still:
We drink of Thee, the Fountainhead
And thirst our souls from Thee to fill.
And long teast upon Thee still:
We drink of Thee, the Fountainhead
And thirst our souls from Thee to fill.
Come near to the holy men and
women of the past and you will soon feel the heat of their desire after God.
They mourned for Him, they prayed and wrestled and sought for Him day and
night, in season and out, and when they had found Him the finding was all the
sweeter for the long seeking. Moses used the fact that he knew God as an
argument for knowing Him better. "Now, therefore, I pray thee, if I have
found grace in thy sight, show me now thy way, that I may know thee, that I may
find grace in thy sight"; and from there he rose to make the daring
request, "I beseech thee, show me thy glory." God was frankly pleased
by this display of ardor, and the next day called Moses into the mount, and
there in solemn procession made all His glory pass before him.
Excerpt from A. W. tozer: Following Hard After God!