- Overcomer Literature Trust
- Swindon
- Wiltshire
THE NAME THAT SHALL ENDURE.
By Gordon Watt.
When a person gains the title of counsellor they are generally expected to have reached a position of honour and repute. In matters of law a counsellor is indispensable. In the affairs of life the man of sound advice is a true friend. Neighbourliness often manifests itself by the help it affords in a moment of need and difficulty. What a counsellor may be in the ordinary things of daily life, the Lord Jesus Christ can be to each one of us in all that concerns us.
No title more aptly describes the length and breadth of our need and the height and depth of His power than the one given to him by Isaiah, that of Counsellor. With life as it is, faced with innumerable tests, often in danger of becoming tangled and twisted, what do we need more than One to guide and instruct us, to reveal the dangers of the way and point out the safe path ? All this, and much more He will do.
First then, it is clear that if the Lord Jesus is to be our Counsellor, He must understand and have experience of our every day life.
No one can offer counsel if he is ignorant of the need, but the right of Christ to be our Counsellor springs from the fact of His perfect, all-round experience of life, and the everyday circumstances that are familiar to us. Have we temptations? He was tempted to the utmost limit throughout His life. Are we acquainted with sorrows? Are there any sorrows like His? Is hard work our experience? An ancient tradition regarding Christ is that Joseph, the husband of Mary, died early and on Jesus, as the eldest son, there fell the responsibility of supporting His mother and the other members of the family. The few years of His public ministry were crowded with service, and many of His busiest days were followed by long nights of prayer on the hillside. Have we disappointments? He had the same, with Peter and the other disciples, with the multitudes because of the hardness of their hearts, with the people whom He had come to save and by whom He was rejected. Have we enemies? So had He, bitter, fierce and prejudiced, and the enmity never ceased even after His death.
It is a great gain to us, in our everyday life, to remember that as we are so was He and that our experiences differ from His only in degree. All the circumstances of life, producing hardness and trial, were known to Him in greater measure than they can ever be experienced by us. This brings the Lord Jesus near to us, making real our kinship with Him. “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathise with our weaknesses” (Heb. 4 v15).
It is equally clear that the position of a Counsellor is a guarantee of ability to give counsel and to carry it out. When the Lord says, “I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go” (Psalm 32 v8), it means that He has knowledge of the way and power to guide us in it. We must not for a moment think that Christ would say what was not true, or give a promise which He could not fulfil. ‘‘The plans of the Lord stand firm for ever” (Psalm 33 v11). ‘‘As for God, His way is perfect: the word of the Lord is flawless” (Psalm 18 v30).
The Hebrew word from which Counsellor comes means to command. That is not possible for any one unless he has power. The very fact that Christ is Counsellor is the proof that He can give counsel, and gives the guarantee that no one who follows and obeys will find that they are wrongly led.
As the Guide through life, the Lord Jesus Christ is infallible. Failure on His part is impossible. “I am the Light of the world”, He said to the people of His day, “whoever follows Me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life” (John 8 v12). We are passing through perilous days. Faith and the power of prayer are each being tested through and through. The message of the Word of God and the call of the Cross is, ‘There’s the Light’, in the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Wonderful Saviour, the unfailing Counsellor and the One who is coming to reign.
As Bunyan sat by his fireside in a condition of misery through the awakened sense of sin, suddenly he felt impelled to say, ‘I must go to Jesus’, and to Jesus he went. The darkness fled away. The blessed things of Heaven came into view, and he said to his wife, ‘Now, I know, I know’. ‘Oh’, he writes, ‘that night was a good night to me. Christ was the precious Christ to my soul that night’. Bunyan had seen the Light and found his way to heaven. And all who look to Jesus and follow Him will know that joy and peace. It is worth noticing one other fact. The word Counsellor means to care for. With our true Counsellor our interests become His own, and all His knowledge, wisdom and powers are devoted to the success of our cause.
In the provision of His death for us He goes to the root of our need. Through His death He deals with our sin. His death on Calvary is God’s way of bringing to us what is of supreme importance to our lives, the pardon of sin, the cleansed conscience, a heart set right with God and the sense of being no longer a stranger but one of his family in the joy of reconciliation.
There are many things we can do without but we cannot afford to miss these. If they are lacking in life, it is proof that God has not yet entered it. The family bond has not been established. That lonely death on Calvary is for us that we might be delivered from the guilt and power of sin and might know the joy of forgiveness and life in Christ.
Then there is full provision through His Life. When pardon and peace have become realities it is possible for the life of Christ to flow into our nature. A new power takes up its home in us, the power of His Holy Spirit. Through Him provision is made for keeping life right in daily experience. Amid the heat of the conflict and the claims of service, He will constantly reveal sin and failure, showing the necessity of cleansing through His precious blood. Then He will bestow grace upon grace to enrich our lives to the glory of God and the good of others.
Provision is also made in the hope of His Return. That Christ is coming is a fact. That He will come suddenly is also a fact. That multitudes will be unprepared for His coming is the saddest of all facts. But those who have received Him as Saviour and followed Him as Counsellor and Lord will find that in the hour of His return life will be crowned and made forever His.
Blessed are all who have caught sight of the Light in the darkness of this world and who see the way home. The Wonderful Counsellor will not lead us astray. A friend stood by the deathbed of Michael Faraday, who had been the most brilliant scientific genius of his day, and said to him, ‘What are your speculations now?’ ‘Speculation?’ he replied in astonishment, ‘I have none. I know Whom I have believed. My soul rests upon certainties’. Only Jesus will be sufficient for any one in our hour of testing. “Therefore, my brothers, be all the more eager to make your calling and election sure. For if you do these things, you will never fall, and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ’’ (2 Peter 1 v10-11).
From: ‘The Name that shall Endure’.