O, Thou alone canst hope or help afford ; There is no way beside. I look to Thee, my glorious risen Lord, And I am satisfied.^
2. The promises of God are certain in Christ. — This is the special assertion of St. Paul in the text. And these promises, we may say at once, have their certainty of fulfilment in Christ because He has fulfilled the conditions on which they are sus- pended. "The wages of sin is death." "Without shedding of blood is no remission." So say the Scriptures ; so says the con- science of man in a hundred lands. The promises of pardon for sin are many and rich ; but they are all based on the fact that Christ voluntarily took our place under the Law and paid the penalty our disobedience incurred. Behind the promises are the cross and the real sacrifice it bore. That that sacrifice of Him- self was accepted of God in our behalf is put beyond denial by His resurrection from the dead. Anyone can write a promise of pardon; many wise men have taught moral truth; and some good men have died in pity and in love for their fellow-men. There were three crosses on Calvary that day. Why do we lean with all religious hope on the central cross ? Because Christ in His teaching, in His works of mercy, in giving Himself to die for us, based the acceptance by God of what He did in our behalf on His resurrection on the third day. Other men were wise ; loved their fellow-men with a passion of love and died for them ; but of such only Christ was raised from the dead at the time foretold. The opening of the grave and the raising of the dead is the sole prerogative of God. That resurrection is God's endorsement and acceptance of Christ's sacrifice as atonement for man's sin. The promises of the needed grace for the passing day are based on the fact that after His resurrection Christ ascended into heaven and is there making continual intercession for us. These promises put us in touch with a living Saviour. The promises of future
^ Edith H. Divall, A Believer's Rest, 30.
2 COR. I. 20 35
glory on which we depend are based on the fact that Christ has entered into that glory and is there now preparing a place for us, to return again to take us to Himself, that where He is we may be also. There, then, is the security behind these promises — the person and the work of Christ, His life. His death. His resurrec- tion, and His ascension, by virtue of which the promises are Yea.
(1) The promise of the love of God is secured in Christ. All too often we forget the riches of this truth ; we lose sight of the Father's love. Perhaps in sincere anxiety not to forget that Christ is God, we think it a dim and distant truth when we hear that the Father Almighty loved, and loves, His Son and the sinner and the world. But here again the Bible tells a different story. It shows us the love of God the Father as the very source of our salvation in Christ Jesus. " This is my beloved Son ; hear ye him " ; " He spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all " ; " the Father himself loveth you, because ye have loved me " ; " through him we have access unto the Father " ; " the Father, according to his abundant mercy, hath begotten us again unto a lively hope." To know the Father — through our Lord Jesus Christ, never apart from Him, but through and in Him, — is the glorious privilege of those who have life through grace. "This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent."
The question may arise in some minds. Is there any need for proving God's love ? The question never arose except within the limits of Christianity. It is only men who have lived all their lives in an atmosphere saturated by Christian sentiment and con- viction that ever come to the point of saying, " We do not want historical revelation to prove to us the fact of a loving God." They would never have fancied that they did not need the revela- tion unless, unconsciously to themselves, and indirectly, all their thoughts had been coloured and illuminated by the revelation that they professed to reject. God as Love is " our dearest faith, our ghastliest doubt," and the only way to make absolutely certain of the fact that His heart is full of mercy to us is to look upon Him as He stands ro^^ealed to us, not merely in the words of Christ — for, precious as they are, these are the smallest part of His revela- tion— but in the life and in the death, which open for us the heart of God. Eemember what He said Himself — Tiot " He that hath
36 THE YEA AND THE AMEN
listened to me doth understand the Father," but " He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." " In him is the yea." And the hopes and shadowy fore-revelations of the loving heart of God are confirmed by the fact of His life and death. " God estdblishetk (not " commendeth," as our translation has it,) his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."