A PERFECT WAY
[p. 287] A PERFECT WAY
The consciousness of the perfection of God’s way has been one of faith’s strongest supports in all ages. Nothing, indeed, could be more blessed and assuring for the heart than to have this consciousness. In a scene of desolation and death, where there is so much to cause exercise and grief, God’s “hidden ones” find themselves sustained by the infinite comfort of this divine word, “As for God, his way is perfect”.
Behind everything is the perfect way of our God. The starting-point of that “way” is the bosom of infinite love. The end of it is the blissful accomplishment in vessels of mercy of every thought conceived in that bosom. It is a way that leads to holiness and glory; in a word, to conformity to Christ. Are there sorrows that sorely test our hearts? Be assured that God intends every one of them to be a road for us to Christ, so that we may reach Him and learn Him in some character of His love and power that otherwise our souls had not known.
Nor does the comfort of this fail us on occasions when we are bowed in confusion of face because of failure that has brought us into deep sorrow and exercise. Not that the comfort in such cases is so direct and immediate, because God loves us too well to spare us the exercise needed to bring about true restoration and effectual deliverance from that which has been a snare to us. Indeed, we have to feel and own that it is in the perfection of God’s way that we thus suffer and are exercised. But at the same time we realise that we have now come under the mighty hand of God for discipline, that we may be delivered from our own will and lusts, and, in result, exalted in the knowledge of Christ. And in this we see the perfection of God’s way.
[p. 288] The real gain of chastening is that we are thereby turned to the Lord. If we do not reach the Lord there is no permanent transformation. So long as one is actually under pressure there is a certain repression of the flesh, but it asserts itself again as soon as the pressure is removed. But if the pressure brings about an exercise of soul in which we really turn to the Lord and reach Him, the effect of being in His presence is that we are “changed into the same image”. There is not only repression, but transformation. We get something positively of Christ which displaces what is of the flesh.
It is the gracious thought of God to gird us with strength and make our way perfect. Nothing will really satisfy Him as to our way here but that we should walk before Him in a perfect way; that is, in perfect confidence in Himself, with not one misgiving thought as to His love.
In John 11 — that incomparable chapter — we read that when Jesus had heard that Lazarus was sick, “He abode two days still in the same place where he was”. Did this seem like the way of perfect love? Why did He not hasten to the side of His sick friend, to rebuke the disease and comfort the sorrowing sisters? Did He not well know how the delay must try them? The first words of Martha and Mary to Him show how fully they were assured that had He been there their brother had not died. They felt that He might have spared the wound had He chosen to do so. That there was holy submission, I doubt not, but His love had not acted as they expected.
How often is it thus with us! We count upon divine love to do for us according to our thoughts, and according to nature’s estimate of things, and we find that He abides still. He allows the dreaded wave of sorrow to break over our spirits. It is well at such a moment to remember that “As for God, his way is perfect”.
It was in the perfection of the divine way that Jesus “abode two days still in the same place where he was”. His delay was not only for God’s glory, and for His own glory, but it was for infinite blessing to Lazarus and Mary and Martha. It gave [p. 289] occasion for Him to bring out before their hearts what He was in a way infinitely beyond all their expectations. It became the opportunity for them to discover the depths of His tender love and sympathy, and to know Him also as “the resurrection and the life”. The Son of God was glorified before their eyes; they gained immeasurably in their knowledge of Him. They learned Him in presence of death and the grave as they could not have learned Him anywhere else. His way was perfect.
Nor do we need to leave this chapter to find a happy instance of a saint whose way was made perfect. “Martha, as soon as she heard that Jesus was coming, went and met him: but Mary sat still in the house”. It was in God’s perfect way that Jesus “abode two days still in the same place where he was”, and I think Mary’s way as a saint was made perfect when she “sat still in the house”. Her soul was as a weaned child. The restlessness of nature, active in Martha, had no place with her. She would not move without His word, any more than He would move without His Father’s word. In this we see a fine effect of her having sat at His feet and heard His word (Luke 10: 39). She had been formed in His own company. He had girded her with strength in giving her the blessed knowledge of Himself and of the Father whom He was here to reveal. And in the strength of this knowledge she could be still and know that He was God. She could quiet herself in the confidence of His love at a time when every natural desire had been disappointed.
This is what we need. This girding with divine strength, the effect of nearness of heart to the Lord, alone can make our way perfect through a scene where every kind of heart testing comes upon us. Our strength is proved not so much by activity as by repose. Activity is often the relief of a restless spirit. It is a heart quiet, because girded with the strength of divine love, that can sit still and await the bidding of the Lord.
In due time, as the next chapter shows, Mary’s way was as perfect in service as it had been perfect in sitting still in the house. She was so thoroughly in accord with the Lord that, at [p. 290] the fitting moment, she could perform a service for which no other saint, so far as we know, was morally competent. She was girded with strength and her way was made perfect. Oh for more of that nearness to the Lord which would give us thus to walk in a perfect way, whether through sorrow or in service! A poet of the world has said, ‘All great service flows from the centre of a quiet heart’. This witness is true.