SUNDAY READING.

Taranaki Daily News, 8 April 1922, Page 9

SUNDAY READING.

“CRUCIFIED, DEAD AND BURIED." “God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, not charging men’s transgressions to their account, and He has entrusted to us the message of this reconciliation.” —II. Cor. V. 19. (By Rev. A. H. Collins, New Plymouth.) There is a story told of Augustine pacing the ribbed sea-sand, wrapped in profound meditation on the nature and attributes of God, and seeking to formulate a definition that would cover all the facts. In the midst of his troubled thoughts, he passed and repassed a child engaged in the profitless task of pouring sea water out of a cockle shell into a hole in the sand. “What are you doing, my son?” asked the great man. “I am going to empty the ocean into that hole,” replied the child. “That is impossible,” said Augustine. “Not more impossible than for you to compress the Infinite within the measure of your skull,” was the pert reply. Whether the story has any foundation in fact I can’t say. For the credit of childhood I hope the story is not true. I only retell it for the sake of the moral it suggests. Theology is Queen of the Sciences, and its study demands the service of the brightest minds and the devoutest hearts; but when we mediate on the deep things of God the wisest and the best have to confess their limitations. It is humbling to say “I don’t know,” but it is sometimes the only honest thing to do. “Lo. these are the outskirts of His ways, and how small a whisper do we hear of Hirn.” The authors of “the Apostles’ Creed’’ do not explicitly state why Jesus “suffered under Pontius Pilate” and was “crucified, dead and buried.” The “Te Deum Laudamus” is clearer:

“We therefore pray Thee, help Thy servants whom Thou has redeemed with Thy precious blood.”

But “the creed” implies the same truth. The purpose for which -Christ “suffered under Pontius Pilate” and was

“crucified, dead and buried’’ was to reconcile us to God. and though I have already spoken on that fundamental doctrine of the Christian faith, I shall offer no apology for returning once more to it. Our text is one of the great texts of the New Testament, and deals with the subject of the Christian Redemption. Four facts are stated: “God was in Christ.” That means Incarnation.

“Reconciling the world unto Himself.” That means atonement. “Not reckoning unto them their trespasses.” That means Forgiveness. “Having committed unto us the word of reconciliation.” That means Evangelism. You see we are not skirting the coast; we are out on a great and wide sea.

A MESSAGE OF RECONCILIATION.

The conception of the Gospel as a message of reconciliation is peculiar to Saint Paul. In this chapter he dwells on it as if it recalled some gracious memory for which he was not willing to part. The same idea is found in his ■Epistles to the Ephesians and the Col•ossians, which contain the Apostle’s ripest thoughts on Christian doctrine. To reconcile is to produce harmony where there was discord, and unity where there had been variance. To use a figure of speech, sin introduced discord in God’s world. The' Divine string and the human string in the harp of life did not harmonise. The Divine string gave forth music, full, clear, perfect, but the human string was disordered, disattuned, jarring; and Jesus Christ came to atone and attune the human with the Divine. To put the same truth another way: I You mav have two substances in a vessel, and though they lie side by side they do not unite, but introduce a third element, and they together, they perfectly blend. Two persons live side by side, but they are alienated. Ignor ance, pride, passion, keep them apart; but there comes a great peril, a great sorrow, a great and glorious deed of love and sacrifice, and the sense of alienation is swept away, and they are united in a common purpose and common aim. In music you call it “harmony,” in science you call it “combination,” in human relations you call it “reconciliation,” in theology you call it “atonement.” The much-discussed word “atonement,” which sounds theological and confusing, means the same thing. Space the word out this way: “At-one-. went,” and you get to the heart of it. The Apostle says: “Christ hath made of twain one new man, so making peace.” Jesus Christ reconciled man to God, man to hia. brother man. man to himself, and man to man’s duty. The death of Christ is the At-one-ment.

TWO INTERPRETATIONS. But the doctrine of reconciliation has been interpreted in two ways. Theologians and Expositors of equal learning and piety have said two different things. Some have held that the object of Christ’s death was to reconcile God to man, whilst others say the object of Christ’s sacrifice of Himself was to reconcile man to God. Which is the New Testament way? Does the reconciliation concern God in His relation to the world, or the world in its relation to God? The distinction is so important, and fhe misconception is so widespread, that I want you to think quite seriously about it. Did Jesus Christ come into the world, and die on the cross, to win God to love of men, or to express .God’s love, and win men to love and service of God? Did Christ come to remove some obstacle out of the way. and make it possible for God to forgive the guilty? Did Jesus reconcile God to man or man to God? Ts Jesus the cause or the proof of the love of God?

I hate to criticise other men’s conceptions of religious truth; it seems to be neither gentlemanly nor Christian. But, in no spirit of censoriousness, I am going to quote from the “Book of Common Prayer.” In the ninth of the Thirty-nine Articles it is written: “Man is born into the world with a nature inclined to evil, therefore every person born into the world desorveth God’s wrath and damnation.” The logic does not seem very clear or convincing. It sounds strange to be told we deserve wrath and damnation for something born in us, something over which we have no control than th£ color of our hair or the ea-’t of our features. The article proceeds to say that Jesus Christ suffered to reconcile the Father. Here are the exact words: “The offering of Christ, once made, is that perfect redemption, propitiation and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world, both original and actual, and there is none other satisfaction for sin than that alone.” That is ’to say. the sins we were born with, and 'the sins we have fir+nallv committed, deserved Goda wrath, but the suffering our Lor* l -ndumi has cl anged the Ethier’s heart. m’i U wav nf reconciling ‘ ’c r .V l ather by in-

suiting and slaying His most loved Son? God is reconciled by the darkest and most terrible crime in the history of the world! A MISCONCEPTION, Dr. Watts has been called “the Father of Modern Hymnology.” His noble hymn—- “ Our God, our help in ages past, Our hope of years to come,” makes the world his debtor, but some of his hymns for children, reflect the same painful misconception. This is one: “Come, let us lift our joyful eyes, Up to the courts above, And smile to see our Father there, Upon a throne of love. “Once ’twas a seat of dreadful wrath, And shot devouring flame, Our God appeared, consuming fire, And Vengeance was His Name. “Rich were the drops of Jesus blood That calmed the frowning Face, That sprinkled o’er the burning throne And turned the wrath to grace.”

In gfL volume of sermons by a worldfamous preacher, sometimes called' “the last of the Puritans,” there is this passage: “If I understand the Gospel, it is this: I deserve to be lost and ruined, and the only reason why I should not be damned is this, Christ was punished in my stead, and there is no need to execute sentence twice over. Christ took the cup in both His hands, and at one tremendous draught of love, He drank damnation dry.” And in another passage he says: “Jesus wiped the red anger spot from the cheek of Deity.” Now, it would be easy to say hard things about these statements. That is not my object, and it would serve no useful end. I myself was trained an that school of thought, and I know the pain of unlearning the teaching of early years. I revere the memory of the great teachers and z evangelists whose words I have cited, but the misconception is serious.

JESUS AND GOD. You may recall how Olive Schreiner, in “The Story of an African Farm,” makes one of the characters to say: “I love Jesus, but I hate God”! Some twenty years ago. I knew two little children whose mother overheard her babies talking jn childish prattle, as they snuggled together in bed: “Which does ’oo love best, Jesus or Dod ?” asked the one child of her sister. “Oh! Oh! I love Jesus best, ’cos Dod loves us when we’s dood. but Jesus loves us when we’s dood and when we’s naughty.” Dear little mites! What great teachers children are! Would we could keep their simplicity! Now, the New Testament never once represents the cross as a satisfaction offered to God. The New Testament never once Represents God as the angry Father who needed to be placated. Jesus was not tK.e victim of the Father’s wrath. God the Father did not punish His Son. The sufferings of Christ were not needed to awaken God’s pity for sinful men. Saint John does not say that God was so angry that He sent His Son to appease His anger, so that we might not perish but have- everlasting life. Saint John says the reverse of this. The appeal of the cross is to the human heart and not to the Divjne. God is reconciled. God is at peace. This is a redeemed world. The throne of the universe is mercy, nnt marble. The Gospels do not represent the cross as a judicial translation between God and Jesus. The police court idea is foreign to the Gospels. The anger, the estrangement, is ours, not the All-Father’s. You know how hard it is to bring together those who are at variance, and you know the greatest difficulty always lies with the offender. The man who has suffered the injury, jf he be a true man. with a spark of nobility in his nature, will be ready to end the strife. It is the transgressor who presents the obstacle.

GOD IS LOVE. God is ready to forgive. His heart goes out In love unutterable. Nothing He could do to reconcile the world to Himself has been left undone. The irreconcilability is ours —yours and mine. God is Love. It is written across the wide heavens, and stamped on all the earth. Flowers that star the meadows, and the sky that studs the dark with diamonds, the meanest things that creep, and the angels that sing in Heavenls *g<lory, declare that love, pure, bountiful, free, is over all. And the Cross of Christ is love’s last appeal to end the strife, and “Be ye reconciled unto God.” Faith’s starting point is the universal At-one-ment. Christ died for the sins of the world. Therefore he died for yours and mine. The sacrifice God made in Jesue Christ was a fub At-one-ment for the sin of the whole world. It is not simply a declaration of God’s readiness to forgive. It is a testimony that God has dealt with sin once for all, and forgiveness to the uttermost is assured to every man who will receive it. The Gospel'is not “Believe and your sins will be atoned for.” The Gospel is “Your sins have been atoned for. therefore belie ve.” God’s forgiveness is already full and free, and it is ours the moment we accept it. “Suffered under Pontius Pilate, crucified, dead and buried.”