Presence

A Chinese catechist once depicted the sinner as fallen into a deep and dangerous pit, and helpless and hopeless. First came Confucius, and, looking down, said: “I am very sorry for you. If you get out of that, take care that you do not fall in again.” Next came Buddha, who, looking down in pity, said: “If only you could get up half way, I could come to meet you half way, and so raise you up.” Last of all Jesus came by, and went down to the very depth of that pit, lifted up the poor, wounded sinner, “set his feet on a rock, and established his goings.”

It is the unique and crowning glory of Christianity that it saves mankind by the presence of God in the world. In no other religion or religious system is the presence of God a reality in human life. In Islam He is exalted far above man and entirely separated from human sins and needs. In Buddhism He is lost in the world of nature and has no personal contact with human hearts. In Islam God is lost to man by reason of His transcendence, and in Buddhism by reason of His supposed immanence. The same results accrue from the Unitarian conception of God, and are also manifest in the various philosophical systems which occupy much of human thought today. God is either regarded as dwelling in solitary abstraction and out of all touch with human life, or else He is absorbed in the created world, and in no sense a power over individual hearts.

Only in Christianity are the two great complementary truths of God’s transcendence and immanence preserved, reconciled and balanced. God is assuredly transcendent in all the glory of His unique splendour and divine majesty, but He is also immanent, divinely and blessedly present, in the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit. The Christian revelation of the Holy Trinity alone preserves God to us as a personal presence and practical power.

To every sinner comes the message, “The Word is nigh unto thee.” Man has not to strive and climb in order to reach up to God and find Him. God is here, waiting to be gracious, not willing that any should lose or miss Him. And it is the entrance of God into the soul that really constitutes salvation. He does not send a gift; He comes Himself. Salvation is not so much a gift as the presence of the Divine Giver. “Here am I.”