“Chapters 9-11 of this epistle [to the Romans] are interesting in a great many ways. They are interesting, for example, in their tremendous conception of the mystery of the divine will. The ninth chapter is a good corrective for any carelessness in our attitude towards God. After all, God is a mystery. How little we know of his eternal plan! We must ever tremble before him. Yet it is such a God who has invited us, through Christ, to hold communion with himself. There is the true wonder of the gospel—that it brings us into fellowship, not with a God of our own devising, not with one who is a Father and nothing else, but with the awful, holy, mysterious Maker and Ruler of all things. The joy of the believer is the deepest of all joys. It is a joy that is akin to holy fear.”
(J. Gresham Machen, The New Testament: An Introduction to its Literature and History [Carlisle: Banner of Truth, 1990], pages 152-3.)
Δουλεύσατε τῷ Κυρίῳ ἐν φόβῳ καὶ ἀγαλλιᾶσθε αὐτῷ ἐν τρόμῳ.
(Ψαλμός 2:11)
Serve ye the Lord with fear, and rejoice in Him with trembling.
(Psalm 2:11)
“There is the true wonder of the gospel—that it brings us into fellowship, not with a God of our own devising, not with one who is a Father and nothing else, but with the awful, holy, mysterious Maker and Ruler of all things.”
The sad part is that we humans have turned this wonderment into a tool for manipulating each other instead of the the wellspring of joy it was meant to be…
LikeLike