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Matthew 26:39:
39And he went a little farther, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.
In the Our Father, and in Gethsemane, it is the same prayer: "Thy will be done," but, though on both occasions the emphasis and the words are alike, the meaning in Gethsemane is altogether different.
"Thy will be done!" in the Our Father means: "Thy will, O God, be done by me;" in Gethsemane, on the other hand, it means: "Let Thy will, O God, come upon me, let things happen with me not as I will, but as thou wilt."
This latter prayer also supplies so large a part of that knowledge of God which is eternal life.
We increase in the knowledge of God, when our will conforms itself to God's will in such a way that we do not think, speak and act otherwise than in harmony with the ordinances of the Lord. This makes us to increase in the knowledge of God, because then God's will enters into us, He Himself transforms our will, and uniformity with the Image of God becomes ever more clearly visible.
But there is also an increase in the knowledge of God which comes when we ourselves will what God ordains concerning us; when willingly we adapt ourselves to what He has determined for us in His council and by our lot in life; and when we accept everything that our lot in life brings us, not only without complaint and murmuring, but with the heroic courage of faith.
But this increase in the knowledge of God progresses differently and in a far more painful way.
The painfulness consists in this, that when we accept God's will in our lot, we suffer that will passively. When, "Thy will be done!" means: "Let me do Thy will as the angels do it in heaven," it stimulates our energy, imparts tension to the will, and when we triumph over sin, great gladness fills our heart. But when: "Thy will be done!" means: "Let things happen with me not according to my desire but according to Thy decree," then there is need of submission, of resignation to suffer what God ordains and appoints.
Then there is, at least in the lower school of suffering, no development of energy, but inward enervation; no stimulus that tightens the will, but a stressing cord that binds it; a total loss of self; not the smile of heroic boldness, but the tear of poignant sorrow.
And this indeed leads to deeper knowledge of God, but often in a way that is most grievous because it is attended by such unknown and unsolvable enigmas.
Problems then especially cast their gloom upon the heart; not when it is a matter of undergoing a sorrow, but when it comes to the carrying of some bitter cross from one's early years to the end of his life.
Again and again this happens in life: A woman was most happy; hers was a pure delight in the possession of husband and child. Neither was she irreligious. An overwhelming sense of happiness found frequent expression in thanksgiving and praise. The love of her Father in heaven was so great. He made her so happy, her cup was full to overflowing.
But things change. Serious illness breaks up the quiet of her peace. And husband and child are snatched away by death.
Now everything is gone. Now she can not be comforted. Now her deeply wounded soul rises up in rebellion against God.
It has all been self-deception—misleading. No, God can not be Love. How could a God who is Love be so cruel as to cast her down from the heights of her great happiness into the depths of bereavement and grief?
And in this bewilderment of affliction, words of despair and of defiant unbelief flow from her lips. "Talk no more to me of God. Cruelty can not be love. There is no God."
So the break of happiness in life becomes the break of faith in the soul.
She fancied that she knew God, and now that He appears different from what she had imagined, she gives up all faith.
With her husband and with her child she also lost her God.
And what is left in the soul is but a burned-out hearth from which the last spark has been extinguished.
This makes you feel how hard the lesson is which through the school of suffering must make us increase in the knowledge of God.
When for the first time in our life the cross with its full weight is laid upon our shoulders, the first effect is that it makes us numb and dazed and causes all knowledge of God to be lost.
The psalm of love was so beautiful, it glided of itself into our soul so sweetly. A God who is only Love, love for us, in order to bless us, to make our life rich and glad, oh, who would not willingly attain unto the knowledge of such a God ?
In our life among men it is indeed glorious when love and nothing but love is shown us. And how rich, then, our heart feels in the possession of a God, who causes only love, only streams of happiness and peace to flow out after us.
But now dawns the day of adversity, the day of trouble and disappointment, the day of sickness and grief. Where now is the love of my God? Where now is that outflow of love from the fatherheart? For not only has God not spared me my dying husband and my darling child, and has left me praying without coming to my aid, but He has deliberately taken them away from me. He sent the sickness into my home, and, oh, too cruel almost for words, He himself has killed my husband and my dear child; He has torn them from my heart, to be carried out to the grave.
And of course, in the end, this must bring it about, that we attain to another, a better knowledge of God, which explains His dealings with us. But at first what our heart feels is that we can not square this with our God as we had imagined Him, as we had dreamed Him to be.
The God we had, we lose, and, then it costs so much bitter conflict of soul, before refined and purified in our knowledge of God, we grasp another, and now the only true God in the place thereof.
The first lesson, then, consists in this, that in actual life, with our whole outward and inner existence, we give in to a higher decree, and bow before an All-power, against which we can do nothing.
And this seems dreadful, but yet this very thing is the discovery of God as God in the reality of your experience.
As long as we are but just started on the way to the cross we fancy ourselves the main object at stake, it is our happiness, our honor, our future—and God added in. According to our idea we are the center of things, and God is there to make us happy. The Father is for the sake of the child. And God's confessed Almightiness is solely and alone to serve our interest.
This is an idea of God which is false through and through, which turns the order around, and, taken in its real sense, makes self God and God our servant.
And from this false knowledge of God the cross removes all foundation. Cast down by your sorrow and grief, you become suddenly aware that this great God pays no heed to you; that He does not measure nor direct the course of things according to your desire; that in His plan there are other motives that operate entirely outside of your preferences; that, if needs be, His Might crushes you with one blow; and that in the working of that Plan and of that Might you are nothing else and nothing more than a particle of dust which cleaves to the driving-wheel and is driven before the wind.
Then you must submit, you must bend. You stand before it in utter impotence, and from this selfsame heaven, in which thus far you saw nothing but the play of light and clouds, darkness now enters into your soul, the clap of thunder reverberates in your heart, and the flaming bolt of lightning fills you with dismay.
This is the discovery of God's reality, of His Majesty which utterly overwhelms you, of an Almightiness which absorbs within itself you and everything you call yours. And for the first time you feel what it is to have to do with the living God.
Such is God.
Now you know Him!
And then begins the new endeavor of the soul, to learn to understand this real God thus known. Then begins the query, the guessing, the pondering, why this Almighty God should so be and do. Then the troubled heart seeks an explanation. It seeks this in its guilt and sin. It seeks this in the after-effects of the past. It seeks this in the purpose wherewith the cross was laid upon us, and in the fruit which it shall bear in the unraveling of eternity. For a long time it still remains the endeavor of finding the explanation of God's doings solely and alone in ourselves.
Until the soul makes a still further advance, and abandons the theory of Job's friends, and, like Job, receives the answer from God Himself out of the whirlwind, and now learns to understand how God's appointment covers all suns and stars, all hours and centuries, and causes all creatures to revolve themselves around Him, the Eternal One, as the one and only center; so that therefore His council and plan are as high as heaven and consequently exceed our comprehension; and that not the verification of His council, but the entering into the life of it, whether it be through joy, whether it be through sorrow, is our honor and the self-exaltation of our soul.
This breaks the passiveness which enervates, and quickens again the stimulus which imparts heroic courage willingly to drink the cup, to drink it oneself, and not let it be forced upon us. To will to drink, as Jesus willed to die on Golgotha—with a broken heart, to co-operate in God's work, and in this suffering co-operation with God, Who slays us, to find eternal life.
The soul is thus like the sentinel who lets himself be shot down at his post and, in dying, enjoys the approving look of his general.
And he rejoices therein, because he knows, and now sees, that the general, who doomed him to death, yet loved him.
* * * * * * *This devotional classic offers 110 meditations on a single thought from Psalm 73: "As for me, it is good to be near to God." The author states, "The fellowship of being near unto God must become reality ... it must permeate and give color to our feeling, our perceptions, our sensations, our thinking, our imagining, our willing, our acting, our speaking. It must not stand as a foreign factor in our life, but it must be the passion that breathes throughout our whole existence."
The meditations reflect the blending of spiritual vigor with doctrinal loyalty so consistently expressed in the life of Abraham Kuyper. These are devotions with true substance, avoiding the extremes about which Kuyper adds a word of caution: "Stress in creedal confession, without drinking from the Living Fountain, runs dry in barren orthodoxy, just as truly as spiritual emotion, without clearness in confessional standards, makes one sink in the bog of sickly mysticism."
Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920) was a Dutch political leader and Calvinist theologian. Elected to parliament in 1874, he became Prime Minister in 1901 and served in that capacity until 1905. As a theologian, he revived a systematic, orthodox Calvinism. He founded the Free Reformed Church and the Free University of Amsterdam. His other works include Principles of Sacred Theology, Lectures on Calvinism, and The Work of the Holy Spirit
Further information about Abraham Kuyper's life can be seen in the translator's "Biographical Note"; further information about To Be Near Unto God can be Abraham Kuyper's "Preface" to that book.
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