Project Description
2017/03
The Greatest Recovery
“I restored that which I took not away.” Psalm 69:4
Satan and sin are robbers against both God and man. Satan, in tempting God’s image bearer to sin, set out to rob God of the glory of His wisdom, justice and power. It resulted in the will of the creature being exalted above the will and wisdom that God had revealed in His holy law. The language of the deed was plain. We will make our own will a law. This was in effect saying to God: ‘Depart from us; for we desire not the knowledge of thy ways. What is the Almighty that we should serve him? and what profit should we have, if we pray unto him?’ (Job 21:14,15). When God’s power was defied and His justice denied, the clear inference was that the arm of His power is weak and what He says He will not do.
Sin robbed man of original righteousness, conformity to the image of his Creator, and eternal happiness. Spiritual life and liberty, light and sight, peace and contentment were gone. The Devil thought he had great spoil in taking man as a captive prisoner. In his utter poverty and misery, man was without God in the world.
Was ever robbery so great or the losses sustained so unparalleled? Yet, in great love and rich mercy God sent His only begotten Son into the world to recover all that was lost. He alone can say: ‘I restored that which I took not away’(Psalm 69:4).
How then has Christ made restitution of those things which He never took away from God or man? Unless there was a restitution to both, there could be no peace between them! He who is God took our nature into a personal union and by this union the glory of that nature is restored to a place of honour greater than when it appeared in the first Adam before his fall. It is now on the throne of the Lamb, in union with our great God and Saviour. As His ‘delights were with the sons of men’ (Proverbs 8:31), He had a bride in Adam’s family to espouse to Himself for eternity. When He saw her in the devil’s grasp He went to the rescue so that the glory of grace would be exalted in the salvation of lost souls. God’s holy law was transgressed, but Christ maintained its dignity in restoring a perfect obedience to it, so bringing in an everlasting righteousness. He is the Lord our righteousness having been ‘made sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him’ (2 Corinthians 5:21). ‘Riches and honour are with [Him]; yea, durable riches and righteousness’ (Proverbs 9:18). It is to Christ’s glory as Mediator that He spoiled those principalities and powers that had robbed God and man and so restored to God all that was His due and recovered for man all that he had lost.
Let your heart be filled with praise to your blessed Restorer in restoring to you that which He took not away.
Rev Leslie Curran.