Psalms 130:8

Psalms 130:8

I. These words speak to us, first, of a Person. Do we know that Person? We are all well acquainted with His history; we believe it, no doubt: but does that faith colour our lives and shape our deeds? That is the question. Is the soul, in its separate individuality, reaching out to a personal God, whom even now it can touch by virtue of a sacramental union, and to whom it can even now speak in prayer and be certain of an audience?

II. How careful our blessed Lord is to teach us the truth; how often that tremendous "I am" confronts us at the very outset of much of His teaching; and in His one person all truth is seen to be summed up. He teaches us no doctrine about Himself. From first to last, His teaching is Himself; He is the expression of all He taught. From the first "I am" far away back in the pages of the old world history down to the "I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end," of the book of Revelation, it is so.

III. Redemption implies both the bringing back by One who shed His blood for us, and it implies as well the victory of One who is our King. In Christianity we are led through obedience to the kingdom, through the sufferings to the crown. If Christ be King, He calls for our personal surrender; if Christ be the Redeemer, He calls to us to come to Him for cleansing: but as He Himself is truth, He looks for reality in all our approaches to Him. Let us strive to know our God by personal access to Him, and knowing Him, strive to serve Him ever better. Let us labour on towards the goal, till we learn to know Him perfectly, who can alone "redeem Israel from all his iniquities," who alone is "King of kings and Lord of lords."

Bishop E. R. Wilberforce, The Awaking Soul,p. 88.