“Run, John, run. The law commands
But gives neither feet nor hands.
Better news the gospel brings;
It bids us fly and gives us wings.”
—John Bunyan, quoted by Jerry Bridges in The Discipline of Grace (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 1994), 90.
This careless laughing world is not a home
That throws its smiles on you;
So mount by faith to realms on high
Your Father’s house to view,
Go up and see your promised lodging-place,
True portion of the heaven-born child of grace.
And daily learn both to possess and miss
Christ’s secret bridegroom-smile,
Whose wisdom sees it best that He
Must go and come awhile,
That He might draw your stray affections home
And ground your faltering love on Christ alone.
How blest the man whose hope with open face
Looks onward to the day
When Christ shall put desertions, loss
And trials out of play!
Nor earth again the heart from God divide
Or sever Christ the bridegroom from His bride.
- Faith Cook, Grace in Winter (Carlisle, Pa.: The Banner of Truth, 1989), 58-59.
“A cross with Christ’s own presence blest
Deserves another name,
For when He comes — arms full of joy –
He sets the heart aflame.
No harder, happier tree was yet
On my weak shoulder laid
For Christ and His fair cross to me
Sweet company are made.
This sorrow bears a child of joy,
My pain is easy pain,
My prison to a palace turns
My loss to richest gain.
For Christ has come and on my head
Poured out His spikenard rare,
And hard it is to smother love
Or hide its fragrance fair.
Then let me sing a song of love
Till every tongue unite
To sound my well-Beloved’s worth
And tune His praise aright.”
- Faith Cook, Grace in Winter (Carlisle, PA.: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1989), 81.
“It’s enough to drive a man crazy; it’ll break a man’s faith
It’s enough to make him wonder if he’s ever been sane
When he’s bleating for comfort from Thy staff and Thy rod
And the heaven’s only answer is the silence of God
It’ll shake a man’s timbers when he loses his heart
When he has to remember what broke him apart
This yoke may be easy, but this burden is not
When the crying fields are frozen by the silence of God
And if a man has got to listen to the voices of the mob
Who are reeling in the throes of all the happiness they’ve got
When they tell you all their troubles have been nailed up to that cross
Then what about the times when even followers get lost?
‘Cause we all get lost sometimes…
There’s a statue of Jesus on a monastery knoll
In the hills of Kentucky, all quiet and cold
And He’s kneeling in the garden, as silent as a stone
All His friends are sleeping and He’s weeping all alone
And the man of all sorrows, he never forgot
What sorrow is carried by the hearts that he bought
So when the questions dissolve into the silence of God
The aching may remain, but the breaking does not
The aching may remain, but the breaking does not
In the holy, lonesome echo of the silence of God”
- Andrew Peterson, “The Silence of God” on the album Love & Thunder
Thou lovely Source of true delight,
Whom I unseen adore;
Unveil Thy beauties to my sight,
That I may love Thee more.
Thy glory o’er creation shines;
But in Thy sacred Word,
I read in fairer, brighter lines,
My bleeding, dying Lord.
’Tis here, whene’er my comforts droop,
And sins and sorrows rise,
Thy love with cheerful beams of hope,
My fainting heart supplies.
Jesus, my Lord, my Life, my Light,
O come with blissful ray;
Break radiant through the shades of night,
And chase my fears away.
Then shall my soul with rapture trace
The wonders of Thy love;
But the full glories of Thy face
Are only known above.
- Anne Steele, Poems on Subjects Chiefly Devotional, 1760
The law supposing I have all,
Does ever for perfection call;
The gospel suits my total want,
And all the law can seek does grant.
The law could promise life to me,
If my obedience perfect be;
But grace does promise life upon
My Lord’s obedience alone.
The law says, Do, and life you’ll win;
But grace says, Live, for all is done;
The former cannot ease my grief,
The latter yields me full relief.
The law will not abate a mite,
The gospel all the sum will quit;
There God in thret’nings is array’d
But here in promises display’d.
The law excludes not boasting vain,
But rather feeds it to my bane;
But gospel grace allows no boasts,
Save in the King, the Lord of Hosts.
The law brings terror to molest,
The gospel gives the weary rest;
The one does flags of death display,
The other shows the living way.
The law’s a house of bondage sore,
The gospel opens prison doors;
The first me hamer’d in its net,
The last at freedom kindly set.
An angry God the law reveal’d
The gospel shows him reconciled;
By that I know he was displeased,
By this I see his wrath appeased.
The law still shows a fiery face,
The gospel shows a throne of grace;
There justice rides alone in state,
But here she takes the mercy-seat.
Lo! in the law Jehovah dwells,
But Jesus is conceal’d;
Whereas the gospel’s nothing else
But Jesus Christ reveal’d.
- Ralph Erskine (1685-1752)
Philosophers have measured mountains,
Fathom’d the depths of seas, of states, and kings,
Walk’d with a staff to heaven, and traced fountains
But there are two vast, spacious things,
The which to measure it doth more behove:
Yet few there are that sound them; Sin and Love.
Who would know Sin, let him repair
Unto Mount Olivet; there shall he see
A man, so wrung with pains, that all his hair,
His skin, his garments, bloody be.
Sin is that Press and Vice, which forceth pain
To hunt his cruel food through every vein.
Who knows not Love, let him assay,
And taste that juice, which on the cross a pike
Did set again abroach; then let him say
If ever he did taste the like.
Love is that liquor sweet and most divine,
Which my God feels as blood; but I, as wine.
~ George Herbert (1593-1633)
