The Godhood of God # 3

The Godhood of God # 3

The chief trouble is that so much that passes for faith today is really only maudlin sentimentality. The faith of Christendom in this twentieth century is mere credulity, and the "God" of many of our churches is but a mere figment of the imagination. Modern theology has invented a "God" which the infinite mind can understand, whose ways are pleasing to the natural man, a "God" who is altogether "such a one as" (Psalm 50:21) those who profess to worship him, a "God" concerning whom there is little or no mystery. But how different the God which the Holy Scriptures reveal! Of Him it is said, His ways are "past finding out" (Romans 11:33). To particularize:

1. The "God" of the moderns is altogether lacking in POWER. The popular idea of today is that deity is filled with amiable intentions - but that satan is preventing the making good of them. It is not God's will, so we are told, that there should be any wars, for wars are something which men are unable to reconcile with their ideas of Divine mercy. Hence, the conclusion is, that all wars are of the devil. Plagues and earthquakes, famines and tornadoes, are not sent from God - but are attributed solely to natural causes. To affirm that the Lord God sent the recent influenza epidemic as a judgment scourge, would be to shock the sensibilities of the modern mind. All such things as this, area cause of grief to "God" for "he" desires nothing but the happiness of everybody.

2. The "God" of the moderns is altogether lacking in WISDOM. The popular belief is that God loves everybody, and that it is His will that every child of Adam should be saved. But if this be true, He is strongly lacking in wisdom, for He knows quite well that under existing conditions, the majority will be lost. If He is really desirous that every creature should have an equal chance to be saved - then why allow so many to be born into families (of criminal parents, for example) and be brought up under conditions where they will never hear the Gospel - and there are many thousands such in this country.

If it should be said in reply God has not created these criminal conditions, the point is readily ceded - but nevertheless God is responsible for sending children into them, for the fruit of the womb is solely in His hands. Why not produce sterility among criminals, if it is contrary to His will for children to be born into such conditions, conditions which frequently preclude all reading of the Scriptures and all hearing of the Gospel.

3. The "God" of the moderns is lacking HOLINESS. That crime deserves punishment is still allowed in part - though more and more the belief is gaining ground that the criminal is really an object of pity rather than censure, and that he stands in need of education and reformation, rather than of punishment. But that SIN - sins of thought as well as deed, sins of the heart as well as life, sins of omission as well as commission, the sinful root itself as well as the fruit - should be hated by God, that His holy nature burns against it, is a concept that has gone almost entirely out of fashion! And that the sinner himself is hated by God, is indignantly denied even among those who boast most loudly of their orthodoxy.

4. The "God" of the moderns is altogether lacking in a SOVEREIGN PREROGATIVE. Whatever rights the deity of present day Christendom may be supposed to possess in theory - in fact they must be subordinated to the "rights" of the creature. It is denied, almost universally, that the rights of the Creator over His creatures is that of the Potter over the clay. When it is affirmed that God has the right to make one as a vessel unto honor, and another as a vessel unto dishonor - the cry for injustice is instantly raised! When it is affirmed that salvation is a gift and that this gift is bestowed on whom God pleases - it is said that God is partial and unfair. If God has any gifts to impart, He must distribute them evenly, or else bestow them on those that merit them, whoever they may be.

And this God is allowed less freedom than I, who may disburse my charity as I best please, giving to one beggar a quarter, to another a dime, and to the third nothing at all if I think well.

How different is the God of the Bible from the "God" of the moderns!!!

The God of Scripture is all-mighty. He is one who speaks - and it is done, who commands - and it stands fast. He is the One with whom "all things are possible" and "who works all things after the counsel of His own will" (Eph. 1:11). He is the One "who has measured the waters in the hallow of His hand, and meted out Heaven with the span, and calculated the dust of the earth by the measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance" (Isaiah 40:12).

He is the One with whom "the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance," with whom "all nations before Him are as nothing - and they are counted to Him less than nothing, and vanity" (Isaiah 40:15, 17).

~A. W. Pink~

(continued with # 4)