SUNDAY COLUMN

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 70, Issue 119, 4 March 1950, Page 3

SUNDAY COLUMN

A Triumphant Cause (CONDUCTED BY THE ASHBURTON MINISTERS’ ASSOCIATION). We live in an age when in many quarters we see indecision. There is indecision, among the nations in particular. Wliat is to be tlie outcome of the stalemate with regard to the ultimate peace issues of a war long finished? What will the nations decide about controlling atomic warfare? What ideology will triumph—true democracy, or totalitarianism, under the name of Communism or any other name? Big issues remain undecided in regard to racial problems, and in the internal affairs in many lands many causes are seeking a triumphant conclusion to a long struggle.

, A Vain Hope?

Is it a vain hope to keep looking for an adequate foundation for the solution of tlie underlying difficulties which make tlie world situation so tensely undecided? Many have set out to show how hope can be found in the midst of turmoil. Many voices have tried to utter a solution to our problems, but in the end, these solutions have proved to be vain hopes. Delusion and defeat have been lurking just round the corner when man lias liad the highest hopes that at last he lias achieved success in solving his difficulties. Can the educationalist, the scientist, the philosopher, the reformer, or anyone else bring to light some scheme which will meet with universal acceptance, and finally rout tlie forces of selfishness and greed which so often dominate the scene in every age? Underlying every unsolved problem of our world to-day we can see such forces. Selfishness and greed raise their heads in every sphere, and must be eradicated before any vestige of hope will be seen to he other than vain hope. Human ambition and racial pride and aggression are but expressions of selfishness and greed.

The Solution

There is yet a solution to the problems which surround us. It is not in the clamant voices of man-made remedies. There is not one undecided issue in the world to-day which could not be brought to an end if men would only listen to the message of the Bible. Such a Statement often meets with sneering and ridicule from those who have tried every other solution and will not try this one. It is a fact that every human effort to find a solution will fail. There is only one solu lion —the God-given one w/iicli is seen in the Bible. All indecision and disorder disappear before the true application of this remedy. All selfishness and greed and pride and anger, and in fact all human sins, are eradicated when the message of the Bible is heard and obeyed. This message is centred round the person of Jesus Christ. Before His spotless purity human sin was exposed, sometimes to seek forgiveness, and sometimes to turn away in stubborn refusal to accept the forgiveness which He offered. In the presence of Christ, the grasping greed of Zaccheus was touched to repentance. The stubborn pride of Peter in his own personal ability to triumph over temptation was humbled and brought to the attitude of simple trust in Jesus, and proclaimed boldly that Christ alone could meet human need: “There is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.” The self-righteous, and racially proud Paul met Christ in a vision, and declared (henceforth that his whole hope was not in his own achievements or in his Jewish birth, but in the merits of Jesus Christ in whom he trusted. Whenever the church has deviated from the proclamation of the fact, that only Jesus can save mankind, it has been robbed of its witness and its power. When it lias stood firmly upon the truth of the Bible, and lias sought to tell the world its hope is in Christ, the church lias been triumphant. Tlie message of the Bible calls to all everywhere to repent of their sin, to believe that Christ died to meet the penalty of each man’s sin and to set man free from sin. Only when we have cast ourselves upon Christ in faith, and have been willing to put aside all pride of achievement, can we know in ourselves that here is the solution to man’s problems. Until the human heart has yielded to Jesus Christ, and until the individual man has rejected sin and chosen to follow Christ by faith, the world’s problems will remain. The fault of this world’s ills lies not to tlie charge of God, or to the charge of Christ’s church, hut to the charge of those who persistently refuse to accept the God-given remedy for human sin, namely the Crucified Saviour, Jesus Christ, who alone can bring hope to the world. His cause is the one triumphant cause in the ultimate outworking of all things.