BROUGHT NIGH UNTO GOD

^[p. 60] BROUGHT NIGH UNTO GOD

... That is a wonderful statement, brought nigh unto God. The prodigal son would like to be safe and happy. “Make me as one of thy hired servants”; he had no idea of the near place he was to occupy.

We generally measure grace by the debt. In most minds the debt cancelled, or sins forgiven, defines the grace; that is man’s idea of grace. But with God, blessed be His name, where sin abounded, grace did much more abound, so that we cannot tell the measure of the grace.

Man lost by sin the paradise of man, but in grace, as in the case of the thief on the cross, he through grace is placed “with me in paradise” — the paradise of God! Surely the grace has immeasurably abounded where sin abounded. What a wonderful place to be brought to — with Jesus in the paradise of God, transferred from the deepest degradation to the highest position before God — and to be there as Christ is!

But there is in the natural mind a great reluctance to accept this grace, because the nearer we are to God the farther must we be from man as man is naturally. Even in the awakened soul there is a desire to limit the grace of God. He would not like to miss grace altogether, but he wants to have only as much of it as could be held with what also suits man. There is a reluctance to come so near as to find that all things are of God; and yet once we have tasted of this nearness, and have begun to be merry in the Father’s house, nothing else can fully satisfy us, as nothing short of it satisfies Him for us. May we each know it better.

It is a great thing when through His grace we are a cheer and a help to one another. The eyelash is an immense help to the eye, though apparently holding a very small place, yet it is a most necessary one; so that we all are necessary.