Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Cannot Overdose

And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.
You shall teach them diligently to your children,
and shall talk of them when you sit in your house,
and when you walk by the way,
and when you lie down, and when you rise.
~ Deuteronomy 6:6-7

Ken Ham writes:
With anything else in life, harmful consequences follow overdosing, but we cannot overdose on the Lord Jesus Christ.

Monday, November 2, 2009

The Strength of Weakness

For he was crucified in weakness... ~ 2 Corinthians 13:4

For the foolishness of God is wiser than men,
and the weakness of God is stronger than men. ~ 1 Corinthians 1:25

In a glowing passage, where the ardour of the writer transforms argument almost into poetry, and certainly into rhetoric, Paul declares that "the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men". "The weakness of God" -- even allowing for the warmth of argument, it is a startling phrase.

Paul dares to compare the strength of God and man, and to suggest that God, even at His weakest -- even when limited, hedged about, restrained, as it were, by mercy and gentleness and truth, even though He still respects the freedom of the souls He made, and stoops to plead, to wait, and woo -- still God, in the restraining of His strength and the withholding of His power, is mightier than the mighty and stronger than the strong, and shall prevail.

It is a daring thought, but Paul is thinking of the cross, as the context shows. There, so to speak, God is seen willingly at His weakest, suffering, submitting, and rejected; yet that same cross is the power of God unto salvation. They scorned and rejected, smote and scourged, crowned and crucified, yet He broke them in the doing of it, broke them, outdid them, and conquered them. As the Scottish preacher cried, "Where now are all those who put my Lord to death? Either at His feet, or under them!"

~ Beneath the Cross of Jesus - Reginald E.O. White