The Character of God - Chambers, Oswald
No man hath seen god at any time; the only begot- ten son, which is in the bosom of the father, he hath declared him ( john 1:18). A christian accepts all he knows about god on the authority of Jesus Christ; he can find out nothing about god by his own unaided intellect.
The god i infer by my common sense has no power over me at all.
The vindication of god to our intelligence is the most difficult process. Only when we see righteousness and justice exhibited in the person of Jesus Christ can we vindicate god.
In the face of problems as they are, we see in Jesus Christ an exhibition of where our faith is to be placed viz. , in a god whose ways we do not understand. Jesus Christ reveals, not an embarrassed god, not a confused god, not a god who stands apart from the problems, but one who stands in the thick of the whole thing with man.
When a so-called rationalist points out sin and iniquity and disease and death, and says, how does god answer that? You have always a fathomless answer the cross of Christ.
Gods ways are past finding out! We often state the character of god in terms of brutal harshness while our motive is to glorify him.
Never accept an explanation that travesties gods character.
There are some questions god cannot answer until you have been brought by obedience to be able to stand the answer. Be prepared to suspend your judgement until you have heard gods answer for yourself.
There is a dark line in gods face, but what we do know about him is so full of peace and joy that we can wait for his interpretation.
Gods order is clearly marked out in the first and the last; his permissive will is seen in the process in- between where everything is disorganised because of sin. The christian is one who by the power of the indwelling spirit sees the final issue. The psalmist was perplexed when he saw the prosperity of the wicked (see psalm 73:112); gods final purpose is holiness, holy men and women, and he restrains none of the forces which go against that purpose.
Beware lest your attitude to gods truth reminds him that he is very unwise. Everything worthwhile in life is dangerous, and yet we would have god such a tepid being that he runs no risks! Believe what you do believe and stick to it, but don’t profess to believe more than you intend to stick to. If you say you believe god is love, stick to it, though all providence becomes a pandemonium shouting that god is cruel to allow what he does. Never attempt to explain god to an exasperated soul, because you cannot. Dont take the part of jobs friends and say you can explain the whole thing; if you think you can, you are very shallow. You have to take on the attitude of vicarious waiting till god brings the light. Remember, each life has a solitary way alone with god.
Be reverent with his ways in dealing with other souls because you have no notion, any more than job had, why things are as they are. Most of us are much too desirous of getting hold of a line which will vindicate us in our view of god. It is perilously possible to make our conceptions of god like molten lead poured into a specially designed mould, and when it is cold and hard we fling it at the heads of the religious people who don’t agree with us. God is true to the laws of his own nature, not to my way of expounding how he works. We have to get out of the old pagan way of guid- ing ourselves by our heads and get into the christian way of being guided by faith in a personal god, whose methods are a perpetual contradiction to our every preconceived notion.
We only see another in the light of what we think he is, it takes an amount of surgery on the inside to make us see other people as they really are, and it is the same with what we think about god; we take the
Facts revealed in the bible and try to fit them into our own ideas of what god is like. Am i becoming more and more in love with god as a holy god, or with the conception of an amiable being who says, oh well, sin doesnt matter much? God never coerces, neither does he ever accommodate his demands to human compromise, and we are disloyal to him if we do. Watch the margins of your mind when you begin to take the view that it doesnt matter whether god is holy or not; it is the beginning of being a traitor to Jesus Christ. Spiritual insight does not so much enable us to understand god as to understand that he is at work in the ordinary things of life, in the ordinary stuff human nature is made of. Learn to give honour to god when good works are done, but also learn to discern whether or not they are done by gods servants. The most outrageous moment for the devil will be when he finds that in spite of him- self he has done gods will; and the same with the man who has been serving his own ends.
Everything the devil does, god over-reaches to serve his own purpose.
Have i ever had a glimpse of this that god would not be altered if all our civilised life went to pieces?
Over-refinement in civilisation turns gods order upside down.
God has no respect for our civilisations because he did not found them. While civilisation is not gods, it is his providential protection for men, generally restraining the bad, and affording his children the means of developing their life in him. When the present phase is over god wont have elbow-room, it will be all insurance and combine, and god wont be able to get in anywhere. What is true of civilisation will be true of us individually unless we remember to put god first. In a time of calamity god appears to pay scant courtesy to all our art and culture, he sweeps the whole thing aside till civilisation rages at him. It is the babe and the fool who get through in the day of gods visitation.
God cannot come to me in any way but his own way, and his way is often insignificant and unobtrusive. Never accept an explanation of any of gods ways which involves what you would scorn as false and unfair in a man. God does not act according to his own precedents, therefore logic or a vivid past experience can never take the place of a personal faith in a personal god.
God never crushes men beneath the fear of judgement without revealing the possibility of victorious virtue.
We say that god foresaw sin, and made provision for it: the bible revelation is that the lamb that hath been slain from the foundation of the world (rv) is the exact expression of the nature of God.