What seems so obvious to anxious, pained, bewildered moderns is what is so wrong. We are having to learn again, even in the Church, that Christ’s paradox is always true: “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matt. 10:39). Losing one’s life flies in the face of all of the counsel we are receiving today that it is by finding the self, cultivating the self, expanding the self, and actualizing the self, that we will find life. Today, self-restraint and the self-abnegation‹which faith requires‹have become obscenities. And we miss the point entirely if we think that this is simply a quarrel between two competing views of therapy.

No, what is at stake is whether or not we will be able to see the greatness of God, and whether what we see will enter into the innermost fibers of our being, for this is where our true spiritual health resides. The greatness of his power, wisdom, and goodness, and his greatness in creating, sustaining, and ruling over all of life, are not simply doctrines to be talked about but truths to be appropriated. His greatness in giving and judging his Son in our place, as well as his greatness for what he has yet to do one day in putting truth forever on the throne and error forever on the scaffold, should be matters of great weight to us and great joy for us. The psalmist spoke of longing, of fainting for God, of being enraptured with his beauty (Ps. 84:1-2), of having a compelling thirst for him (Ps. 42:1). How out of place this would be in many of our churches today! The truth is that our diminished “god” simply lacks the power to summon up such longing, such hope, such pleasure, in those who have come to worship him. But if our God has become small and skinny, he has been diminished only in our understanding and experience. He has not really been diminished. So why can we not hope that the Church will yet be surprised to discover his greatness afresh? Why can we not hope that those who long for God, who are enraptured by his beauty, who thirst deeply for him, will become the norm rather than the exception? I know of no reason.

- Dr. David F. Wells

This article first appeared in the July/August 1997 issue of Modern Reformation.

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