i CORINTHIANS i. 22-24 21
for me." Then, suddenly, as he himself records, the Holy Spirit influenced his soul, and " with tears that flowed and would not cease," he bowed and yielded himself unreservedly to the world's Eedeemer, as his Saviour and his God.1
4. Christ the Power of God. — The power of God is the force from above, manifested in those spiritual wonders which transform the heart of the believer ; expiation which restores God to him, the renewal of will which restores him to God. We know now — by experience of many ages — how much more powerful that defeat, humiliation, overthrow, of Christ upon the Cross is than any victory which God could have given Him. It would have been a very small and commonplace exercise of power if God had interfered to set Christ free from the Cross. Had He come in darkness and flame ; had He fallen upon the murderers of our Lord with sudden destruction ; had He slain them as one man with the breath of His mouth, it had been a very poor display of the Divine power. Anybody could have done that (we may say with reverence) if only he possessed the necessary physical power. But to let Christ die, without a sign, without a struggle ; to let Him suffer all things ; to let Him taste of defeat, disgrace, and death; that was an exercise of power which was, indeed, worthy of God.
(1) Christ crucified is the power of God in self-sacrifice. There is no power among men so great as that which conquers evil by enduring evil. It takes the rage of its enemy and lets him break his malignity across the enduring meekness of its violated love. Just here it is that evil becomes insupportable to itself. It can argue against everything but suffering patience ; this disarms it. Looking in the face of suffering patience it sinks exhausted. All its fire is spent. In this view it is that Christ crucified is the power of God. It is because He shows God in self-sacrifice, because He brings out and makes his- torical in the world God's passive virtue, which is, in fact, the culminating head of power in His character.
(2) Christ is, in His sacrifice, the mighty power of God for the salvation of men. This is the power that has new-created and sent home, as trophies, in all the past ages, its uncounted myriads of believing, new-created, glorified souls. It can do for
1 Life of David Hill, 118, 132.
22 POWER AND WISDOM OF GOD
us all that we want done. It can regenerate our habits, settle our disorders, glorify our baseness, and assimilate us perfectly to God. There never yet was a human being delivered from the power of sin, except by the power of God ; and the Divine power never was exerted upon any human being with that view, except through the Cross of Christ, that is, in consequence of what Christ has done and suffered in our room and stead.
If Christ can take the man at his worst and the woman at her basest, and out of them make saints that can love God and that God has loved; make saints that can cause the very breath of the world to grow fragrant and the very heart of the world to grow tender.1
(3) The power of Christ crucified is permanent and universal. Christ addresses Himself to the world; and His influence transcends all external accidents that serve very well for pomps and shows, because He addresses the hearts of men. The power of " Christ crucified " is this, He works personally in every believer, and is present to strengthen every faithful heart. The power which would have gratified the Jews would have been the demonstration of a moment — a sign, a wonder, a triumph; but the power which is to save a world must know no decay ; it must exist at this moment in the same fulness in men's hearts as it did of old on the day of Pentecost. The Jew would have degraded and confined the power of the Messiah ; the Jew and not St. Paul would have put the stumbling-block in the way of man's salva- tion ; the truth, the simple truth, which was so obnoxious was after all the most complete manifestation of the power of God.
5. The Wisdom of God. — While the Cross of Christ, viewed in its bearing upon the condition and character of men, is a most striking manifestation of Divine power, it is no less striking a manifestation of Divine wisdom. Wisdom is shown in the adaptation of means to an end, so as most effectually to accomplish the object intended. The wisdom of God is the light which breaks on the believer's inward eye, when in the Person of Christ he beholds the Divine plan which unites as in a single work of love, creation, incarnation, redemption, the gathering together of all things under one head, the final glorification of the universe.
1 A. M. Fairbairn.
i CORINTHIANS i. 22-24 23
(1) The Cross of Christ affords us a knowledge of the Divine character ', which is complete in all its. aspects, which shows us at once the just God and the Justifier of the ungodly — a knowledge which, as it stands revealed in His own word, and when it is not perverted by the ungodliness of the human heart, brings before our minds the Divine character, in the manner best fitted to mould or transform us into the full resemblance of the moral perfection of God.