Acts 17:28 For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring. 1. Where is God? Ye will answer, "In heaven." True. Our Lord teaches us to pray," Our Father which art in heaven"; and what child would not long to be where its father was? Here on earth we cannot see God. In heaven He is seen in His glory. 2. But is God confined to heaven? Many think of Him so, and many wish so, in order that He might give no heed to them and their ways. But God says, "Do I not fill heaven and earth?" The eternity of God contains all time; the being of God, all being; the infinity of God, all space. If we could see Him here as fully as the angels, this too would be heaven. Yet "God is everywhere wholly, and yet the whole of Him is nowhere." For if He were not here wholly, He would be divided into parts; which cannot be. The air surrounds us, and we are in it, although we do not see it, only, at times, the moisture in it. God surrounds us, and we are in Him, although we have no senses to see or feel Him. 3. God worketh in all things around us, working at a distance, or giving laws by which all things should be and fulfil their being. Wherever anything is, or can be worked, there is God. It is not with God as when we build a house, and part off what is without from what is within, that so God should be shut out by the works of His own hands. He is above, beneath, behind, before them; not a part of them, not immingled with them, nor confused with them; nor are they a part of Him; yet they hinder not His presence. He is not in one way within them, in another way without them; but one and the same God wholly everywhere. 4. But then, since God is everywhere, we move, speak, act, think, in God. This might be the bliss almost of the blessed in heaven. But it has its awful side also. Since we think, speak, act in God, then every sin is committed in God. It cannot be otherwise. You can no more escape out of the presence of God than out of the air which you breathe. God's infinite, unchangeable holiness is sinned against by every sin of every creature, but cannot be injured by all sin. The human feelings which God has given us make men shrink from doing deeds of shame even in this created light. But to God, darkness is light. God not only sees through the darkness, He is in it. There He is, where thou sinnest. Thou canst not turn away from God, except to meet God. Thou canst turn away from His love, yet only to meet Him in His displeasure. Turn, then, in sorrow from thy sin, and thou wilt meet Him and see Him forgiving thee. 5. Yes! so is there a more blessed presence than that through which, in nature, "we live and move, and have our being" in God — nearer, closer, dearer, fuller far, whereby the soul, through grace, may be, or is, in God. God willed, before the foundation of the world, to make us one with Himself in Christ. He did not make us to exist only through Him, or to be encompassed by Him. He willed that we should be in the very closest union of love and of being of which created beings are capable. To this end God the Son, in eternal harmony with the Father's will, took the manhood into God. When men saw our Lord Jesus Christ in the body, they saw Him who was not man only, but God; they saw Him who was, with the Father, one God. And this oneness with us He took, not only to reconcile us to God by putting away the Father's wrath, but to unite us to God in Himself. Marvellous mercy! Yet since God has vouchsafed to do this, stranger were it that God, who is the life of our life, should form us capable of, and yet not give us His love, if we will have it; that He should make us capable of being united with Himself, and not unite us if we will. So hath He not left us. "Whoso dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God, and God in him." "He who is joined unto the Lord is one spirit." "The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who is given to us." 6. Since then all is of God, and in God, since we, if our souls are alive, are in Christ and through Christ in God, there is no room to claim anything as our own. To do so were to rob God. But who could wish to?. How much more blessed is it to draw every breath of our lives in Him. As in nature, even the strength which men abuse against God is still continued by God, so, in grace, each act wherewith, from the sacrifice of Abel, God has been well-pleased, has been done through the power of His grace put forth in men, and by Him perfected in them. Where then can be boasting, or any thought of anything as our own, or any pleasure in any works as our own? (E. B. Pusey, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring. |
    |