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True Education
but that suffering did not begin or end with His manifestation in
humanity. The cross is a revelation to our dull senses of the pain
that, from its very inception, sin has brought to the heart of God.
Every departure from right, every deed of cruelty, every failure of
humanity to reach God’s ideal, brings grief to Him. When there
came upon Israel the calamities that were the sure result of separation
from God—persecution by their enemies, cruelty, and death—it is
said that “His soul could no longer endure the misery of Israel.” “In
all their affliction He was afflicted.”
Judges 10:16
;
Isaiah 63:9
. As
the “whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs” (
Romans
8:22
), the heart of the infinite Father is pained in sympathy.
Our world is a vast gathering of sin-and-disease-stricken people,
a scene of misery that we dare not allow even our thoughts to dwell
upon. Yet God feels it all. In order to destroy sin and its results
He gave His best Beloved, and He has put it in our power, through
cooperation with Him, to bring this scene of misery to an end. “This
gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness
to all the nations; and then the end will come.”
Matthew 24:14
.
“Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature”
(
Mark 16:15
) is Christ’s command to His followers. Not all are
called to be ministers or missionaries in the ordinary sense of the
term, but all may be workers with Him in giving the “glad tidings”
to the world. To all, great or small, learned or ignorant, old or young,
the command is given.
In view of this command, dare we educate our sons and daughters
for only a life of respectable conventionality, a life professedly
Christian but lacking His self-sacrifice, a life on which the verdict
of Him who is truth must be, “I know you not”?
Thousands are doing this. They think to secure for their children
the benefits of the gospel while they deny its spirit. But this cannot
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be. Those who reject the privilege of fellowship with Christ in
service reject the only training that imparts a fitness for participation
with Him in His glory. They reject the training that in this life
gives strength and nobility of character. Many a father and mother,
denying their children to the cross of Christ, have learned too late
that they were thus giving them over to the enemy. They sealed their
ruin not alone for the future but for the present life.