The Mystery and the Glory of Redemption
J. Cairns, D. D. Isaiah 55:8-9 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, said the LORD.… The whole Bible is but an expansion of one utterance of the Eternal, "I am Jehovah." Hence the revelation must be incomplete, for a God who could fully reveal Himself to His creatures would be no God; and it must also be astonishing and amazing, for a professed record of any part of God's thoughts and ways that did not land in mystery and tend to wonder, would be self-condemned, and proved to be neither true nor Divine. I. God's ways are not our ways, nor His thoughts our thoughts, in regard to THE NEED OF REDEMPTION. The lessons of Scripture, while leaving the entrance of evil in its awful mystery, assist our faith by showing that our misgivings in regard to God, which thence arise, are groundless, and also that, however strange, yet as a matter of fact, evil can be overruled for good. II. God's ways are not our ways, nor His thoughts our thoughts, in regard to THE PURPOSE OF REDEMPTION. Man, as we learn from Scripture — the only source whence we can expect to know it — is not the only being who has fallen; but man is the only being who is redeemed. There arc those who profess not to believe in Scripture, but who arraign this supposed procedure as unfair and unequal; and there are those also who accept Scripture, and yet reject its apparently clear testimony as to the exclusion of fallen angels from mercy. Both classes of objectors go upon the same principle that God cannot justly punish with a final sentence of rejection those who have sinned against Him, no matter how aggravated their offences may be; but that in some way having given them being, He is bound to make that being ultimately good and happy. But this runs counter to the whole Bible doctrine of grace; for on this footing, redemption is a clear debt; and whether it be fallen angel or fallen man God is not entitled to withhold it. Men may stand in their views either upon justice or upon grace; but they are not entitled to stand upon both. III. God's ways are not our ways, nor His thoughts our thoughts,, in regard to THE PLAN OF REDEMPTION. How utterly unlike to any means of man's devising are those which God has chosen for the recovery of His lost creatures to His favour and image! All the opposition to evangelical religion with which we are surrounded, and which incessantly repeats, "Give us a Christianity that is rational! Give us a Christianity that we can believe! Give us a Christianity that meets, as everything else is doing, the advancement of the age! — what does it amount to but this, "Give us a Christianity without God! Give us a Christianity without that element of grandeur, of mystery, of overwhelming superiority to man's thoughts and ways, which compels awe and humbles pride t ' We accept the demand, come from what quarter it may, as an, involuntary homage to the superhuman glory of the faith we stand by. IV. God's ways are not our ways, nor His thoughts our thoughts, in regard to THE PROGRESS OF REDEMPTION. Redemption has a history; and this of all others the most difficult to scan, not only as it lies in the Bible, but in uninspired records. It has been said, "Interpret the Bible as any other book;" but though there is a certain truth in this, if we take it roundly it ultimately means, " Interpret God as you interpret man." You cannot even interpret Church history as you interpret any other history. It is in a sense which belongs to no other history, the story of a battle not yet fought out, of a campaign not yet ended; and there are combatants at work beyond the range of human observation, and a supreme celestial leader, whose point of survey none can share. I shall illustrate this union of mystery and greatness in regard to three features in the progress of redemption. 1. The rate of its progress. 2. The instruments of its progress. 3. The hindrances to its progress.Man would have thought that hindrances would have speedily been removed, or that if they were suffered to remain or to return, they would have proved un-mingled evils to the Church. But God, on the other hand, we can now so far see, by giving the victory slowly, trains the faith and courage of successive generations, and by permitting old enemies to return, or new ones to spring up, shows the un-exhausted and inexhaustible energy of His Gospel, to face and put down every hostile power. V. It is only necessary to add a few words in regard to THE LIMITS OF REDEMPTION. Here also God's ways are not as our ways, nor His thoughts as our thoughts. And hence the real and painful difficulty, which has always been felt in regard to the Gospel, and perhaps never more openly expressed than in our own day. "Why should not all men, as God wishes, "be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth"? Why should redemption, in the case of the human family, have any limits at all? Can we aspire to take in all God's view of what a tremendous evil, like sin, and especially the rejection of the Son of God, may demand? (J. Cairns, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. WEB: "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," says Yahweh.