Bible Commentaries

SPIRITUAL ACQUAINTANCE

‘Acquaint now thyself with Him, and be at peace.’

Job 22:21

I. We may learn much of God in nature.—Everywhere the world is beautiful—sea and sky, wave and grass, flower and sea-shell, wood and river; but how much poorer it would be if it did not speak from every leaf of its great picture-book—reminding us of the missals of the Middle Ages—of the Eternal God. As by studying the pictures, or books, of an illustrious man whom we have never seen, so by contemplating the works of God we may know Him. The invisible things of God are made known by the works of His hands—His eternal power and Godhead.

II. We may learn much of God also from great and good men who have lived in every age of the world and in every land.—‘Where is the country whose history is so dead that it has not had some such men to show?’ And we must always believe that the light which shone in them, amid a good deal of ignorance and mistake, was just borrowed from Christ Himself. ‘In them we have simply the sunlight before the sunrise.’

III. But after all, the only way of acquainting ourselves with God is by looking into the face of Jesus Christ.—‘Christ spoke the words of God, and that was much. Christ was the Word of God, and that was vastly more. The Incarnate Word of God is the real Light of the world.’ All other men are fragments of the One Man. In each there is some failure, some plan, something that we dare not imitate. But Jesus Christ is perfect man, as He is also, by His essential nature, the Eternal God; and in His perfect humanity the Eternal God is declared. ‘He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.’ He said to Philip, ‘How sayest thou then, Show us the Father?’

We must, first, be at peace with God by confessing ourselves worthless sinners, and taking our stand on His finished work, and then, being at peace with God through faith, we may go on to know God, according to His Divine promise, ‘I have declared thy name to those whom Thou hast given Me, and will declare it.’

Illustration

‘To acquaint oneself with God is no light and easy task; it involves an intercourse which must be not only personal, but profound. There are many persons in the world whom we may know by name, by hearsay, even by sight. But we never properly begin to be acquainted with them until we get upon what are called “speaking terms.” So one primary method of spiritual acquaintance with God is the method of prayer. Only as we master this method, step by step, and grow familiar with its conditions and its results, do we come to understand the inward meaning of the will of the Father, and to realise “those deep abysses of judgment and mercy in which the foundation of every prayer is laid.”’