0363. How It Happened
How It Happened
"But God" is the key note of the change from WHAT WE WERE to WHAT WE ARE. "We were dead," but God—-"We were walking according to the course of this world," but God—-etc., etc.
God wrought out this change "in Christ." It reads: "But God * * quickened us with Christ;" "raised us up together with Christ;" "made us sit together with Christ." In chapter Jam_1:20 we read "Which He wrought IN CHRIST."
I. "God Who Is Rich in Mercy."
It will be well to note how the last word in Jam_1:3 is "children of wrath" and the first word in Jam_1:4 is "But God, Who is rich in mercy." In one moment we see His wrath, and in the next moment His mercy. Why such a sudden change? Has God changed His attitude toward the unregenerate? Not at all. The God of wrath is always and at the same time the God of mercy.
At the same time God’s wrath fell upon Christ bearing our sins His mercy was manifested toward sinners.
Nor, can anyone talk of God’s mercy apart from the Cross of Christ. The mercy seat, was a mercy seat, only because the Blood of Christ was sprinkled there. Mercy means, the compassionate God, justifying the unjust. Mercy is God finding a way out–substitutionary atonement. Mercy is not what we deserve. Every sinner merits the reward of his deeds. Mercy says, "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world." Mercy carries with it all the depths of anguish of the Cross. Mercy means, how much it cost Him, how much He suffered to save the unregenerate, the ones who were dead, children of disobedience and sons of wrath.
No marvel it says: "Rich in mercy." How rich we may never know until we can fathom the price paid for our redemption, and the compassionate God behind that price.
II. "For His Great Love."
What! Can it be? Does He love us? Yes–His great love, wherewith He loved us. Loved us, when? Since we were saved? Since He washed us? Oh, yes! But the love He had before, "when we were yet in our sins"!
How beautiful is that passage "Unto Him Who loved us and washed us." It is not washed and loved, but loved and washed. Let no one change the order of the verse.
"God commendeth His love toward us, while we were yet sinners." Let no one try to mar the love of God, by saying He loved us merely because He saw us as we would be after we were washed. Of course He did, but He loved us before we were what we would become. "When we were yet sinners."
Yes, God so loved the world, the world of lost men, that He gave His only begotten Son. Men are not under the wrath of God, because God does not love them. They are under wrath because they refuse His love. They spurn Him. God’s love has prepared a shelter from the storm. A Man (Christ Jesus) is that shelter. The storm of wrath broke upon that covert, in order that God, in love, might shelter all who enter in. But when a man refuses to pass into the door, when he stands outside God’s shelter, the storm must break full upon him.
God loves the lost–the scope of the Cross assures us this is so. Calvary is deficient for none; it is sufficient for all, it is efficient to those who believe.
God loves the lost–every call of the Spirit, every God-sent minister, every prayer of loved ones, is a call of His love.
III. God, His Grace–"for by Grace Are Ye Saved."
What a blessed climax! "Rich in mercy," "His great love" and then "For by grace are ye saved."
Who can fathom the depths of this wonderful word? Many theologians have tried to define the word, and all have succeeded in setting forth some phases of its meaning, but none have compassed them all. Grace is the kindness of God toward us as manifested in Christ Jesus. That is a definition of grace, but each word in the definition needs to be separately fathomed. Who can comprehend the fullness of the "kindness of God;" who can describe the "us" toward whom this kindness is shown, our guilt, our unworthiness and our lost estate; and who can measure the workings of His mighty power toward us "in Christ Jesus"?
Grace must ever remain a word far beyond us. In order to understand "grace" we must understand the eternal glories of the high and holy God; the full fruitage of sin and the eternal woes of the damned; and then, we must see the mercy and the love that reached down and saved us from the one and lifted us up unto the other.
"Some day the silver cord will break,
And I no more as now shall sing;
But oh, the joy when I shall wake
Within the palace of the King!
And I shall see Him face to face,
And tell the story–saved by grace."
Autor: R.E. NEIGHBOUR