of Him—or is He the One who has revealed Himself and whom men can only believe? He, who believes in the revealed God, will not quarrel about His hiddenness. You say: “I live!” You are able to lay hold of God in the world of reality or as the author of your corporal, psychic, spiritual, religious being. True, you live, but you live no other than a life subject to death from the crown of your head to the sole of your foot. What do you know of aught beyond? What do you know of the presence of God in your present life? But, you will say, in my conscience I have come to terms with my God. I reply: “Can you come to accord, in your conscience, with God about anything else than this: that you are under judgment?”
You complain: “How disturbing, how intolerable, how unsatisfactory is the picture of our condition, if things are thus!” And you remind yourself of Jesus Christ. Men say that through His coming the world has become another world and that we are no longer under the law of the Old Testament. But would not Jesus pray today as He prayed then: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me!” And did He do this only that we might be spared the necessity of facing the truth of human life, which is the same yesterday and today? Or may we turn away from this truth because it is so disturbing and unsatisfying? And then you reply: “But God cannot always be angry, nor can he wholly have forsaken us!” Now you are really close to what the prophet says. For he says explicitly: “A small moment have I forsaken thee! For a short time have I hid my face from thee!” But listen closely! He speaks of that which remains when nothing else remains for us. He speaks of the God whom he has found and who has found him. When he says: “not always, not altogether!” he does not wish thereby to justify and to save either himself or the world; he knows that he cannot do that; he knows that the “moment” is the moment of the wrath of God. Why do you defend yourself against this? Is not, perhaps, the very defense itself, which we put up with more or less ground against the word of God’s wrath, proof of the truth of this word? May it not have been just this that Adam was the man who made paradise impossible for himself and was driven out into a world upon which God’s wrath rests, into a world in which the mountains always depart and the hills are always moved—this creature that will have everything; that will be moral, good, pious; but that will not acknowledge that in him there is nothing to save and to justify, so that with his own knowledge of good and evil he can only die?
Is the shadow in which we walk perhaps so dark because all of us are bearing our own torches with so much ardor and refuse to have them taken from us? Is perchance the need which man suffers, nothing else than man himself who wants to judge instead of permitting himself to be judged? Is it perhaps so difficult for us to hear and heed and believe the words of the most blessed promise, with which the prophet would point us beyond the “small moment” of wrath, because we stand in the midst of this “small moment,” as sure as we are human beings whether we would or not, and yet we are always stirred to revolt and rebellion against the truth, against the meaning of this “moment”? O that for a second only we could see ourselves from without (as we see others). How as upright citizens, as cultured men, as Christians, or simply as men we always defend ourselves, defend ourselves against the fact that we are under the wrath of God. If we could hear the arguments that we put forth to show that it cannot be so bad with us; if we could see and hear how out of these arguments and of this attitude with which we deny God what belongs to Him, all the guilt and with it all the punishment which we suffer have come from the beginning of the world—then with one accord we would say Yes to that which we dispute. Yes, God is angry with us, has hid his face from us, has forsaken us, has let us follow our heart’s desires. How else could we be as we are? Just because we fight against it, because we are building up our whole life upon the will to do as though we stood in normal relation and fellowship with God, we prove how true that is which we fight against.
And when we no longer fight and lay down arms, we acknowledge and confess how it stands with God and us. I have said already this cannot happen unless we have heard what is spoken through the prophet: “Hear ye! But with great mercy will I gather thee! But with everlasting lovingkindness will I have mercy on thee! But my lovingkindness shall not depart from thee! neither shall the covenant of peace be removed.” Take heed that by repeating three times the awful “But!” he says this wholly other? And parenthetically he adds, as if God permitted him to share his counsel: “I have sworn that I will not be wroth with thee nor rebuke thee!” And for the sake of the second he spoke the first. Only because he speaks that glorious word, does he speak this dreadful word. Only where this light is can that shadow fall. That may be the way, this is the goal. And the way is here for the sake of the goal, not the reverse. That may be called knowledge but this the truth; and the truth is before knowledge; and when the truth is here, knowledge ceases. Or, that the truth of man, this the truth of God; and this is greater, infinitely greater, than the truth of man, and only by beginning with it can that be known. Behold, now the prophet says that which hitherto we have missed; what we thought we had to add by deceitfully limiting or supplementing. Does it not become clear to us how much richer, more powerful, and more believable, the threefold “but” of the prophet sounds than the little “and yet!” which we keep ready for our justification and deliverance? Do we not keenly feel the difference between that which on our lips is only a pious wish that will never be fulfilled, and that which on his lips is a promise that bears its fulfilment with it? He received them at that moment when all their pious and impious wishes became dumb. Not therefore—but then “spoke the Lord.” What is the content of this promise?
Again one may ask himself whether one can and may seriously repeat after him what he has said here. But the Bible is open, let us read it to the end. True, the prophet says God will not always be angry, nor has he wholly forsaken us. True, God reveals himself, rending the veil of his secrecy just there where it seems to be most impervious. True, God is in the center of our life, just there, where, through death, is confirmed what our life in truth is. No, God is not angry forever; He is angry so long as time lasts, but His grace is eternal. And if it is the disagreeable human pride in which God’s wrath takes form, punishing us with that with which we sin, it is true also that this pride is not eternal, that it lasts only as long as time; eternal is the other—the forgiveness which destroys sin, though we still must bear its penalty; eternal is the truth that we are God’s dear and humble children. And, understand it well, there is no time that is without eternity, no condemning human truth without a comforting divine truth, no earthly goalless way without the light of the heavenly goal. We are not what we appear to be, that is, what we have made and are ever making of ourselves in our rebellion and revolt. We are not what we must acknowledge and confess ourselves to be, far removed from God, separated from God, laden with the divine curse. How could we acknowledge ourselves as such, if we were not already the children of grace and mercy?
Our acknowledging and our confessing are indeed true to that which we are at the moment; grace, that triumphs in our acknowledgment and confession, is eternal. And while it triumphs, the moment is to the “small moment” as an island in the endless ocean. And now the mountains may depart and the hills be removed, yea, the “moment” may be death and hell itself, it is still only the “moment.” “My loving-kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall my covenant of peace be removed.” But, remember, this is not a truth like other truths. One cannot affirm or defend it or formulate it into a system. With each breath we would be deprived of the right and the ability to say this, if God had not said it. One can hear it only as God’s promise. As a discovery and conclusion of man, it is mere folly. The prophet does not let us doubt that it is only true because God does and will do it: “I will gather thee, I will have mercy on thee, I will not be angry with thee.” Take this “I” away, and you will take everything away! Let it be understood then that we do not do this, we do not know this, we do not have this. God does and knows and has this, and we await it as our heavenly inheritance.
To wait for Him in hope and to be happy, because the Spirit confirms in our hearts what the Word says: “I will … saith the Lord!”—that is our portion. For the moment continues, and does not cease to be the moment of wrath. And so we also will not cease to be (without the Spirit and the Word which are God’s) children of the Old Testament, by nature children of wrath. The
