God’s Human Face                                                              3/26/44

 

Scripture:  II Corinthians 5: 14-21

 

Text:  II Corinthians 5: 19;  “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself.”

 

“Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image.”  [Exodus 20: 4].  In these, and the following, words of the second commandment, we have learned that it is forbidden to try to create a face for God out of wood or stone.  The deity, eternal, divine, can not be created or re-created by the hand of man, and so man is commanded not to try.  Our understanding of God is increased in far better ways.

 

Probably God seems a person with real, though perhaps vague, facial features to many a small child.  But as the child grows older, he realizes, if he has grown in wisdom as well as stature, that God is a spirit, not a face, and that we must worship him in spirit and in truth.

 

And yet there is a different sense in which it seems right to speak of the “face of God.”  For centuries, mankind had struggled to know better the nature of God.  God was

Creator; God was awful, stern, just, powerful, righteous.  At length there came a time when men knew that God is also love - that He is Father.  Jesus taught his disciples so to think of God.

 

A prominent minister, whose thought I am using chiefly this morning, points out that in a sublime sense, it may be fair to say that Jesus is God’s “human face.”  The Fourth Gospel reports Jesus as saying, “He that hath seen me, hath seen the Father.”  [John 14: 9].  And again, “He that hath believed on me, believeth not on me, but on him that sent me.”  [John 12: 44].  And that effectively sums up the experience of early Christians with their master.  His life pointed to the power behind him.  His spirit gave the impression, which became conviction, that “God was in Christ.”

 

The tidal wave of new faith that swept over the world in such mighty force can not be explained in little causes.  It was more than the passing of an impractical dreamer which so upset the world at Christ’s coming.  There was, in Jesus’ presence, a power so great and splendid that men called him “Messiah,” “Lord,” Christ,” “Son of God,” seeking a language by which they might account for what happened to their lives and what they had seen happen in the lives of other people.  It was clear to them that God had come into human life, and that they had seen “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”  [II Corinthians 4: 6].

 

If you and I want a hint of the nature of the Everlasting, we are urged to consider Jesus, whom Professor Hocking calls “the human face of God.”  The doctrine of the divinity of Jesus is concerned not so much with glorifying the Master as it is to say something about God.  In the view of certain great theologians, Jesus was of utmost importance because his life revealed some of the splendor of God.  It was as if the Everlasting had been seen in a new face, not as a detached mind, but as a friend who cares and “sticketh closer than a brother.”  Through having seen that face, we feel, when ruthless forces roll over us like a merciless tide, that God is by no means coldly indifferent to our fate; but that He cares for us in our plight.

 

Not by magic does God compel the tide to cease flowing, but by his spirit.  He makes us adequate to ride the waves and to survive, still strong.  His care is revealed not in any absence of crosses on Calvary, but in personal ability to bear and use those crosses.

 

What more do we see in “God’s Human Face?”  We see in Jesus a portrait of spiritual beauty and tenderness.  Though we be engulfed in sin and evil - lost, so far as our frantic efforts are concerned - He will forever “seek and save that which is lost.”  His grace reaches out to the outcast leper, to the accused and condemned of men, to the sick and imprisoned, to the bereaved, to the anxious, to the despairing.  That grace sustains many an exile and refugee, many a hungry one and despised.  Even the lilies of the field and the sparrows of the air are a concern of the Father whose face is seen in Jesus.

 

Something else we see in that face.  In our time we sometimes feel as troubled as the little boy who said he didn’t pray because, so he said, “God is like my father; he is too busy to listen.”  In our concern over the seeming magnitude of our own troubles and problems, we may suppose that God is too busy to pay any attention - like the “old woman who lived in a shoe,” who “had so many children she didn’t know what to do.”  We may wonder as did a professor of religion, “Does God know my name?”

 

We look for a moment at the face of God in Jesus and are persuaded that he does know our names, that he is not too busy to listen, that he is enough greater than any harassed earthly parent to transcend all their limitations.

 

And looking through the window of the Holy Scriptures, we see what we should have known, even before we saw that face.  For the Bible says “yes,” God does know and care.  Elijah’s name and plight were known when he fled from an angry and vengeful monarch.  God knew Samuel’s name and destiny when He called the lad in the night.  [I Samuel 3: 4].  He caught the persecutor Saul unawares on an open road and changed his name to Paul to help wipe out the past.  [Acts 9: 1-30].

 

He knows your name and mine, if we will but listen willingly enough to hear him speaking.  Last Sunday, I suggested that we are too often afraid of Jesus - afraid of what we think he may demand of us if we let down the barriers against his friendship.  If we do let down those barriers, we may feel the nearness of his steady strength; know the reality of his comfort and his peace; the courage and serenity of doing God’s will.

 

It meant something tremendous to the ancient world when God turned out to be not indifferent, nor even whimsical, toward the affairs of men, but compassionately interested in them.  It really got under the skin, and through the crust, into the heart, when Jesus made it clear that God never gives a man up for lost, no matter how such a man may dishonor himself.  If God could be conceived to have a blind spot, it would be the blindness of a love that goes right on believing in us, in spite of all the stupid, foolish things we do.

 

Zaccheus was not what anyone would call an honorable man, cheating on his tax collections as he did, but when Jesus came along, God was seen to discover elements of fineness which none of Zacchaeus’ neighbors had believed existed in him.  [Luke 19: 2-10].

 

There is a dramatic touch in A. J. Cronin’s “The Keys of the Kingdom,” when the agnostic Dr. Tullock lies dying, still unimpressed by the claims of religion.  As the end comes, he says, “I still can’t believe in God.”  The fine old priest replies gently, “Does that matter now? --- He believes in you!”

 

It is like that now, while the sons of men strive with one another like panthers, red in tooth and claw; while prisons hold both men who have killed and men who have refused to kill; while the treasure of substance and youth is flung into the hopper of Mars’ terrible machine.  God still watches oe’er his own.  And an unbelievable multitude are numbered in his care.  God still stands at the door of every individual heart and knocks, and knocks, and patiently knocks, and persistently knocks, and eternally knocks.  No matter how resolutely we close the door, He is still there.

 

A youth learned something of a father’s care in a miserable incident.  He was a reluctant piano pupil of a teacher who believed him prepared for one of those recitals, during which parents and friends may see for themselves the progress made by students of that musical art.  He had prepared for the event carefully, even if reluctantly.  When it came his turn to sit down at the piano, he did so only to discover that he did not know how to begin.  After a few chords, he was to have moved into the melody of a tuneful composition.  He knew that he must do something, so he struck a chord, which unfortunately had no relation to the pleasing notes that should have followed.  Another attempt brought no better success.  After a painful discord, he glanced up at his family to see his father sitting tight-lipped, his mother red-faced, and his sister laughing.  Another false start or two; and then he managed to finish the composition and sit down.

 

Little was said on the way home.  But when he got out of the car, his father put his hand on the boy’s arm and said, “Son, I know that you can play those chords and that piece, and so long as we know it, why should we care about anybody else?”  That was salvation for the boy.  In spite of his failure, and his father’s embarrassment, his father still believed in him.

 

Multiply that experience enough to see that there is a Father who has a faith in you infinitely more than human; altogether sublime and unfailing.

 

What faith in the redeeming love of God can mean to a generation that sees man’s worst flaunted before the world’s eyes, is incalculable.  We have a breathtaking glimpse of what that faith may do as we behold His “human face” in the matchless, changeless Christ.

 

Looking into that face, it is impossible not to find forgiving love shining from the depths of those features.  “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,” [Luke 23: 34], spoken in trust and agony, is the ultimate in forgiving love.  It is not that we deserve to be forgiven.  Forgiveness is not something deserved.  It is something sought out of conscience and regret and moral anguish.  It is an act of free grace on the part of one who is free to offer or withhold forgiveness.

 

If I were to approach my brother whom I had wronged with the proposition, “Now let’s have this forgiven and forgotten, or else I’ll give you another poke,” I should have used the word “forgiven” in entire vanity, with no right to expect anything but more evil.  The Grace of forgiveness is never to be sought except in contrite humility.  Our sins leave their permanent scars - make no mistake about it.  Let the crucifiers pull the nails out of the crucified’s hands, and the mark still stays both on the hands and in the mind of the one who wielded the hammer.  Forgiveness is the only thing that can heal the heart broken by sin and make the scars triumphant over evil.

 

Sins deserve the punishment which in consequence comes in one way or another.  But the punishment can be borne if there is hope of forgiveness.  A little fellow whose father knew better than to “spare the rod” said, “Daddy, I don’t mind being spanked, but please don’t look at me that way.”

 

If nations which may be victorious in warfare are truly to find the right, which bringeth peace, they will punish without vindictiveness.  They will discipline without hatred.  They will certainly stand ready to forgive if they see certain signs of true repentance.

 

When the first lady of China, who has suffered personally, and with her people, through long years of Japanese aggression, says to thousands gathered in New York’s Madison Square Garden, “There must be no bitterness in the reconstructed world.  No matter what we have undergone and suffered, we must try to forgive those who have injured us and remember only the lessons gained thereby,” her listeners have witnessed a contemporary exhibition of the mind of Christ.  There is in it not the slightest indication of any lack of determination to resist Japanese aggression and to destroy Japanese militarism.  But there is in that attitude evidence that the love of God, as well as his justice, are known to China’s leaders.

 

If such redemption and forgiveness seem too easy, let it be remembered that their cost is suffering.  Forgiveness has no meaning if it seems to come from one who has paid no price for the right to offer it.

 

It is through the suffering love of God that the sin of man is transformed in redemptive power.  That redemption is seen in His “Human Face.”  Men have looked on that Face and then remembered, “Behold, the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world.”

 

It is abidingly true that “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself.”

 

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, March 26, 1944.