Acquaintance With Grief
A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. - Isaiah 53:3
<http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?version=31&search=Isaiah+53%3A3>
We are not acquainted with grief in the way in which Our Lord was acquainted
with it; we endure it, we get through it, but we do not become intimate with
it. At the beginning of life we do not reconcile ourselves to the fact of
sin. We take a rational view of life and say that a man by controlling his
instincts, and by educating himself, can produce a life which will slowly
evolve into the life of God. But as we go on, we find the presence of
something which we have not taken into consideration, viz., sin, and it
upsets all our calculations. Sin has made the basis of things wild and not
rational. We have to recognize that sin is a fact, not a defect; sin is
red-handed mutiny against God. Either God or sin must die in my life. The
New Testament brings us right down to this one issue. If sin rules in me,
God's life in me will be killed; if God rules in me, sin in me will be
killed. There is no possible ultimate but that. The climax of sin is that it
crucified Jesus Christ, and what was true in the history of God on earth
will be true in your history and in mine. In our mental outlook we have to
reconcile ourselves to the fact of sin as the only explanation as to why
Jesus Christ came, and as the explanation of the grief and sorrow in life.
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Victoria E Gilkerson
