The Pulpit Commentary — Isaiah — Volume 2 — Section 147

life-preserver on, and the little fellow was ,inst joining with his mother in singing a. hymn of trust and confidence. And when rescue came, and the pasgcngers were safely on another vessel, those same sweet voices were again heard, this time in a rinc,ing 0 strain of praise for their deliverance. III. GoD KEEPS THE TROUBLE WITHIN CAREFUL LIMITATIONS. His concern is about those who have to suffer, not about the trouble, or the circumstances tha.t make the trouble. It may reach our circumstances ; it may even reach our bodies; but God says, "No further.'' Job was ruined; Job was diseased; but God's hedge wa.s round Job himself, and nobody and nothing could touch him. Waters nor fires can ever reach us, to injure or destroy the life in us which God has qnickened.-R. T. Ver. 3.-God the Saviour. "I am the Lord thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Saviour." As we know God, he is a Triune Being-Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; and Scripture traces the whole work of salvation to God thus apprehended. Salvation is not the work of one Person of the Trinity, but the work of the whole personality of God. This is the truth which may be unfolded from the expression in this text. I. SALVATION 1B THE WORK OF THE DIVINE TRINITY. This is variously taught in Holy Scripture, but the most complete and precise expression of the truth may be found in Titus iii. 4-6, which Conybeare and Howson render thus: "But when God our Saviour made manifest his kindness and love of men, he saved us, not through the works of righteousness which we had done, but according to his own mercy, by the !aver of regeneration, and the renewing of the Holy Spirit, which he richly poured forth upon us, by Jesus Christ our Saviour." The love of God appeared. The regene- rations and renewings are by the Holy Spirit. And that Divine Spirit is shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ. God is our Saviour. Jesus Christ is our Saviour. The Holy Ghost is our Saviour. And yet we have not three Saviours, but one Saviour. Young Christians, in the earlier stages of religious apprehension, are wont to grasp firmly the one truth--Jesus is the Saviour. Many Christian people grow old in experience without coming to realize that this is a central truth, which h~s another truth on each side of it. On one side this truth-God is the Saviour. On the other side-the Holy Ghost is the Saviour. Jesus Christ is declared to be God "manifest in the flesh;" God the Father manifest, so that we may apprehend him ; and God the Holy Ghost manifest, so that we may realize bis gracious inworkings. We know God the Father aud God the Holy Ghost through Christ, the manifested Son. Such enlarging of our thought to embrace the full Divine agency in our redemption involves no kind of dishonour to the Lord Jesus. In his part and sphere he is the only One, the only "Name." As the Manifester and Mediator, he stands alone. His sphere is man's earthly life; _he is God with us. He shares our humanity; bears a human name; lives through a human lot; perfects an obedience in the flesh ; endures the final testing of a painful and ignominious human death; and in his redemptive work in the human s1,heres he has none to share with him. When we speak of separate Persons in tho IJivine Trinity, we must apprehend the most absolute unity of purpose in them; and the differ,euces of operation which we can trace are simply gracious modes of reaching men so as to be a perfect redemptive power on them. The Father-God, in his Divine fatherly love, initiates the redemptive purpose, and forms, in his infinite wisdom, the redemptive plan. God the Son executes that part of the Divine plau which reqllireJ. manifestation in man's earthly sphere--in the sphere of the senses. God the Spirit i~ entrusted with that part of the Divine plan which concerned man's inward state-tbo renewal of his mind and feeling and will. I!. THE ONE FOUNTAIN AND SOURCE OF OUR SALVATION, WHATEVER ITS FORM 01< 1TB AGENCY :MAY BE, IS THE DIVINE LOVE. "We are snved by grace." \Ve too often speak of the" mercy" of God, as if it were only an attribute belonging to him. Nay, ,it is far better than an al tribute-it is God: "God 1·s love." But when that love gains expression in man's sphere, so that we may apprehend it, we finu it is working out a marvellous purpose, even the full redemption of a sinful race; and we see it in the hlessed life of the redeeming Son and in the inward grace of the renewing Spirit. Dut all is of God. All is of free, sovereign, unbought, unconstrained, unmerited love. Ho i;nved us. He sent the Son. He sheds the Spirit. It is our Father in heaven whose fatherly love pitied us, yearned for us, and found the gracious ways in which to bring  152 THE BOOK OF THE PROPHET IS.A.I.Alt, [oli. xLLit. 1-2B.