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‘And God saw every thing that He had made, and, behold, it was very good.’
Gen_1:31
I. All which God has made is good, as He is, and, therefore, if anything in the world seems to be bad, one of two things must be true of it: (1) either it is not bad, though it seems so to us, and God will bring good out of it in His own good time; or (2) if the thing is really bad, then God did not make it. It must be a disease, a mistake, a failure of man’s making, or of some person’s making, but not of God’s making. For all that He has made He sees eternally, and, behold, it is very good.
II. God created each of us good in His own mind, else He would not have created us at all. Why does God’s thought of us, God’s purpose about us, seem to have failed? We do not know, and we need not know. Whatever sin we inherited from Adam, God looks on us now, not as we are in Adam, but as we are in Christ. God looks not on the old corrupt nature which we inherited from Adam, but on the new and good grace which God has meant for us from all eternity, which Christ has given us now.
III. That which is good in us God has made; He will take care of what He has made, for He loves it. All which is bad in us God has not made, and therefore He will destroy it; for He hates all that He has not made, and will not suffer it in His world. Before all worlds, from eternity itself, God said, ‘Let us make man in our likeness,’ and nothing can hinder God’s word but the man himself. If a man loves his fallen nature better than the noble, just, loving grace of God, and gives himself willingly up to the likeness of the beasts that perish, then only can God’s purpose towards him become of none effect.
Canon C. Kingsley.
Illustration(1) ‘God saw that it was good.’ His ideals are always realised. The Divine Artist never finds that the embodiment of His thought falls short of the thought.
‘What act is all its thought had been?
What will but felt the fleshly screen?’
But He has no hindrances nor incompleteness in His creative work, and the very sabbath rest with which the narrative closes symbolises, not His need of repose, but His perfect accomplishment of His purpose. God ceases from His works because ‘the works were finished,’ and he saw that all was very good.’
(2) ‘It seems more like a story of mythology than a recital of truth and fact—this record of the garden eastward in Eden. I have wandered far from its blessedness and innocence.
Yet I like to believe in that golden past which lies behind me. It may be a long distance behind. It may be separated from me by many more years than I am able to reckon. But once it was a reality. In the infancy of the world there was a Paradise where nothing but what was fair and gracious grew. And in this Paradise a man and a woman walked with God in the cool of the day. They were fashioned like me, but they were unacquainted with my sins. They were holy and harmless and undefiled.
And why am I glad to remember this? Because what has been may be again. I delight in the thought of that old Eden, remote as it is, impossible as it sometimes looks. It tells me of the lofty levels on which humanity has walked, and may walk. It assures me that there is no iron necessity which makes me a sinner simply because I am a man. It opens the door of a golden future as well as of a golden past.’