An old poem has recently reappeared. Like a hardy perennial it comes up again and again, and the undiscerning will find it good, since they read it through sentiment and not through the Word of God. Richard Watson Gilder wrote:
If Jesus Christ is a man,
And only a man, I say
That of all mankind I cleave to Him,
And to Him I will cleave away.
If Jesus Christ is a God,
And the only God, I swear
I will follow Him through Heaven and hell,
The earth, the sea and the air.
The Word of God tells us not that Providence is the Author of all the sinister tragedies that come upon men, but that He is none other than the Lord Jesus Christ. We know from the Book of Job that it was Satan who, when he was granted the permission, brought war, lightning, rapine, and the great wind from the wilderness, all of which left a trail of death. We also know that it was Satan who, when he was granted further permission, brought disease upon Job. So, in saying that the Lord Jesus Christ is Providence, we are not charging Him with the ills of mankind.
The Word of God tells us that we were loved before we were capable of loving in return. "When we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. ... God commendeth his love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Rom. 5:6, 8). "We love him because he first loved us" (1 John 4:19).
There are those who cry out that they do not want any creed but Christ. We answer, "What Christ?" And the answer to that question is, of necessity, a creed. A minister once said that it was a shame that the church could not follow Paul on the road to Damascus. He had not been bothered with questions of theological dogma. He had simply said, "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" The minister evidently had not read the Word of God very closely. If we realize that the Greek word for Lord was undoubtedly the same as the translation of the Hebrew ,Jehovah, we have the beginning of a creed in the very question.
Christ asked men questions about Himself. Of unbelievers He asked, "What think ye of Christ; whose Son is he?" Of His own He asked, "Whom say men that I, the Son of man, am?" and again, "Whom say ye that I am?" Yet it was not from men that the true answer first came, though the Pharisees answered well that Messiah was David's Son. When Peter came out with his great confession, Christ declared it to be a supernatural revelation and not the result of man's mental processes.
