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How God Receives His Honor

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How God Receives His Honor

8 minuten leestijd Arcering uitzetten

Rev. W.J. Karels, Hardinxveld-Giessendam, the Netherlands

Translated from De Saambinder, September 9, 2010

How does God work further with a person, and how does He receive all the honor?” This was asked by a person who was wrestling with this question in his life. He knew of moments, also under the preaching of God’s Word, when his name was mentioned—moments when he could believe that salvation was also possible for him and the love of God for His Church was experienced. These experiences were now gone and closed up for him. All that remained was his sin and guilt that reached the heavens. The problem was that an applied Savior was missing in his life; he had tasted His love but was missing His person. He had seen his lost state and also had become a beast before God, but now these questions arose in his heart.

First, we need to again realize that the Lord uses people to be a hand and a foot to each other, but, ultimately, it is the Greater Solomon Himself who answers the riddles of the heart. Therefore, it remains, sendforth Thy light and Thy truth to lead me. How important it is to receive instruction and light from the Holy Ghost; the fruit of this is that the Spirit, in His saving work, leads to Gods Word and Scripture. How important it is, time and again, that we find our life explained in God’s Word. In providing an answer to this question we must be assured that our answer is based on Scripture.

While looking at this question we need to think of the experience of Jacob when at Bethel (Genesis 28:12). Was it not as a lost one and as one being persecuted by death that he was enabled to see salvation in Jacob’s ladder? Besides this, he received a precious promise that the Lord would be with him, that his seed would be blessed, and that the land upon which he lay would become his possession. At this time nothing was mentioned about guilt and sin! But twenty years later at the brook Jabok, when Esau was coming and death seemed imminent, and when Jacob experienced that he had to die, how oppressed he then became. To die is to meet God; a debt must be paid.

While at Jabok, Jacob could not deny what took place at Bethel; this he would never forget. Now from his side everything was too short; he still had an unpaid debt. Justice had to be executed. He was fatigued by the long journey that lay behind him, but he was not yet placed outside of all hope. In Genesis 32:24 we read, “And Jacob was left alone,” but we also read of a great wonder, that a Man came to wrestle with him. Jacob did not wrestle with a man, but a Man came to wrestle with him! The Dutch marginal notes say that “This is the Son of God that appeared here in a human body.”

Here Jacob had to perish, and he lost all ground under his feet. Here, he, in the stammering of his name “Jacob,” saw all his sinfulness and his lost state. Here he could receive a new name Israel. It was only by grace and in a marvelous and righteous way. The first altar that Jacob built after this he called “the God of Israel is God.” The God of Abraham and Isaac he could now also call his God, even though he had just shortly before received the name Israel. Do you understand this? Through death Jacob received a new name and assurance of his state.

The question asked was, “How does God work further with a person, and how does He receive all the honor?” Was this not the lesson taught by Christ Himself? “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit” (John 12:24). Also, we read in 2 Corinthians 4:11, “For we which live are alway delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh.”

Is this not what is taught in all of God’s Word? After their conversion, the revelation of the Mediator, and their calling to an office, the disciples were troubled that their guilt still had to be paid by a Surety. Did they not all forsake Him? Was not this because they did not yet know the depth of their blindness in regard to the nature of sin, the requirement of God’s holy righteousness, and the need for payment? Is it not through satisfaction made by the Surety that God comes to His honor?

Rev. G.H. Kersten writes in his explanation of the Heidelberg Catechism that it is precisely in this way that the Surety receives the most value for a poor, bankrupt, and lost sinner. We need to totally disappear so that He will become manifest. We must become smaller and smaller; yea, we must perish, and He must appear. Is this not what we are so against, that dying to self? Our pious and religious nature does not want to be saved by grace. Just as sure as the planting of true faith is a one-sided work of God, so also the practice of faith is a work of God’s Spirit.

How we should beg the Lord to convert, lead, and instruct us in the plain law of the Lord. However, the Lord through the workings of the Holy Spirit not only instructs His elect that they can be saved through faith in Christ but He also teaches them how they can be saved, viz., only on the ground of justice by Christ’s blood. May the Lord grant this to all of us out of mere grace.

We would like to direct you to the honest and clear answer which Rev. Th. Van der Groe gave in one of his letters to a person in an anxious condition who had asked his advice for light on his pathway. Naturally, riddles of the soul differ, and there is a difference in personalities. The Lord, however, knows the heart, both then and now. From the good counsel of Van der Groe we can all learn a lesson. The omniscient God knows as none other what may be applied to us personally.

Van der Groe writes:

My friend, the hope of salvation I have received from God out of grace through Christ I will use as an instruction; Christ will truly give grace only if you truly want grace.

I will advise you with the following:

1. Seek to learn through Christ’s Spirit what grace is. Oh, you will not desire what you do not know. It is my wish that Christ will teach you what grace is, by grace.

2. Seek to learn to understand what actually is standing in the way, for, in fact, Christ is liberal in His invitation and thus is unlimited and universal in His promises, yet your poor soul will not be helped and be made content through Him. Surely, He not only promises, but He also gives rest to all those who come to Him who are weary and heavy laden. Look at His own Word (Matthew 11:28). Even if you have already looked at it one thousand times, yea, look at it again daily, and by His Spirit believe it; then you will surely be helped and be saved.

3. Seek also to truly learn and understand what sin and hell, curse and wrath are, and what these are for you. Oh, for this I wish you Christ’s light itself. Take some time to study these things with your heart by God’s light, until the inner ground of your heart, by God’s grace, is truly shattered. See how long a period of time you have already contended with Christ and His grace and His almighty Spirit. Let your state and your former work, religion, and your discoveries and your experiences you have written about, yea, everything, even all your daily customs, completely fall away, for it is not Christ and also not the way to Christ.

You yourself are a boat pilot, as I read in your letter, and you indeed willingly sail the shortest way that is the easiest. Now may the Lord also deal so with you in regard to your own soul and eternal salvation. I pray you, do not bring works to the foreground anymore, that is, except the three things I proposed to you. Place and enclose yourself (oh, that God’s Spirit would do it for you!) in this fearful and narrow prison and do not walk out of it until, as one bound by Christ Himself, you are let out by the blood of the covenant. Thousands of times people turn or do an about-face in order to enter into heaven, but they miss the only path, Christ Jesus.

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