The River and the Sea - Glenn Conjurske

The River and the Sea

by Glenn Conjurske

It is very common in hymnals to find the grace of God likened to an ocean, usually described as limitless, boundless, and so forth. But the language and imagery of Scripture is quite otherwise. The Bible never likens the grace of God to an ocean, but rather to a river, and there are good and obvious reasons for this.

The river is the proper figure of the love and grace and blessing of God, while the sea is not. Why so? Precisely because the grace of God is not boundless, but flows in a channel with well-defined bounds. His grace may be ever flowing, and ever increasing, but it is always bounded by his holiness, and never will go beyond those bounds.

Moreover, the ocean has no single source, but is rather the great end of a thousand different streams. In this respect also it is manifestly unsuitable as a figure of the grace of God. Further, because it is a great receptacle from a myriad of sources, it is a collection of impurity, and for that reason it cannot be a proper figure of the grace of God. In the Bible it is rather the figure of the Gentiles, the world, the corrupt masses of humanity. “The wicked are as the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up dirt and mire.” (Is. 57:20). It is from the sea that Daniel’s four beasts arise, which represent the ungodly Gentile powers. (Dan. 7:2).

In contrast to this, the real beauty of the true Biblical figure of the grace of God is seen in the first verse of the last chapter of the Bible: “And he shewed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.” Here is its single source, in the throne of God and the Lamb, its crystal purity, and of course, in the nature of the case, its bounds.

And mark, by insisting upon the fact that a river flows only within its own bounds, we lose nothing of the sufficiency which poets seeks to ascribe to the grace of God under the figure of an ocean. The sufficiency of grace is not in question, for it is not bounded by any arbitrary decree of God, but by the simple demands of holiness. God says, “I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely,” (Rev. 21:7),and “Whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely” (22:17). The water of life is both sufficient and free, yet never a single drop shall flow to the wicked in torment, for the bounds of the river are righteousness and holiness.

Ezekiel saw the healing waters as a river, flowing out from the house of God, the same as in the Apocalypse (Ezekiel 47:1)—-at the distance of a thousand cubits only to the ankles, but ever increasing, so that at two thousand cubits they were to the knees, at another thousand to the loins, and at another thousand a river to swim in, which he could not pass over. There was no question of sufficiency. Yet the river had a brink, or banks, which Ezekiel speaks of several times.

The contrast in the scriptural figures is plainly seen in Psalm 46:2-4, where we read, “We will not fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the depths of the sea: though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof. Selah. There is a RIVER, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God.” The sea is restless and raging, the emblem of the wicked, full of wrath, and without peace. When John saw the new heaven and the new earth, his only comment was, “there was no more sea”—-but the RIVER shall flow on for ever, the fit emblem of the grace of him who is the eternal lover and the eternal giver, the eternal source of all blessing.

Glenn Conjurske