between man’s land and God’s land.
How is this to be justified before the eye of man? The “righteous” is the man who has received new eyes to see the other in God, His might, His wisdom, His love. Not his way of flight makes a man “righteous”; he is righteous because all other ways are closed to him. Not his running makes him righteous, but the name of the Lord which is the only thing that is left him. Faith is his righteousness; not faith as his work, but faith that lays hold of and subjects him, faith that is a necessity from which he cannot escape. He cannot triumph, cannot be in the right, cannot make claims; for he is a wholly weak, dishonorable, sinful, and unrighteous righteous man. But in such righteousness, through such faith, the first petition: “Hallowed be thy name!” is fulfilled. For when a man “runs” to the name of God and thus gives honor and right to God, not in wisdom but in foolishness, not in power but in weakness, above all not in extreme piety but rather in extreme godlessness, and notwithstanding “runs” thither, lays hold of this name, says “yes,” then God’s name is known, the name revealed only by Him. In this way faith, for which we must pray, is the true hallowing of the name of God.
It has often been said that our time, with the abolition and dissolution of so many human names, signs and boundaries, is especially favorable for understanding what is meant by running to and believing in the name of the Lord. True, in these years we all feel as if we were sailing hopelessly on a sinking ship and we take it for granted that it cannot be otherwise; so, with one accord, we cry: “Lord, how shall we comfort ourselves? we hope in Thee!” On the contrary this is not the real situation. The indications are that the ship may sink and is sinking; yet an ever increasing number of our contemporaries know how to comfort one another in the cinema or at the football game. Even if we, who are of the better sort, examine ourselves, we shall find that all of us at this time comfort one another, though it may be in a refined, spiritual and devout way. We know how to take courage without God, that we have not lost our confidence in others, in human names, and that much remains for us besides refuge in the name of God. Only let us not imagine that this will ever be otherwise! Things are thus because we are human. The ship may continue to sink for a long time, as deep as in Russia and even deeper—yet with the sinking and on account of it, flight into the strong tower and righteousness through faith will not come. If events and conditions, like these by which we are surrounded, cannot teach us faith, by what else can we be taught to believe? To speak as men, we can only say that we do not learn faith, never will learn faith, neither from ourselves nor under the stress of fate and evil times. Faith comes from God each moment, and when it comes we can say nothing else, astonished and perplexed, but: “I believe, dear Lord, help my unbelief!”
And now, finally, it is said of the “righteous” who runs to the name of the Lord: “He will be exalted.” I cannot tell whether he will know himself to be secure. Perhaps he himself is not sure. The chief thing, at any rate, is not what he knows or imagines he knows, but what is, not in his own power nor in the power of the “certainty” of his believing, but in the power of the name of the Lord. “He will be exalted”: not in vain has he been subdued, humbled, or put to flight. “It shall be that he who calleth on the name of the Lord, will be saved.” This is his exaltation that he comes into the light of this promise. The holy and dreadful name of the Lord, revealed to those who run thither—for where else shall they go? He is kind, friendly, nigh to save. The mark of that which is other in God is his distinctive doing and giving; only through revelation, an impartation of God passing all understanding, is it given unto us and do we have even the proof that God has graciously turned and come nigh unto us. The boundary, that separates God’s land from man’s land, is the boundary, the aim, and the end of unrest, torment, and tears in which we here live and move. He who runs thither, runs well. Ah yes, his faith is the weak, divided, unsatisfactory faith of man, which each moment deserves also to be called unbelief. And yet, on this account, it is true that he has received another faith from God; and in this faith, though groaning under the whole burden of his human nature and all that belongs to it, he has seen from afar (as the publican in the temple) the throne of God. This seeing from afar is the exaltation of the righteous. Ah yes, fear and trembling continue, even the righteousness that we can know only as the righteousness of the sinner. But in this incomprehensible righteousness of the sinner, the other word has its power which apparently is the reverse of that which we hitherto heard: “He who believes, will not flee.”
He who once has fled from the name of God and then has fled to Him; no, he who, on account of the knowledge of himself, must again and again do this, he really needs no more to flee from no one and nothing to no one and nothing. And if he does it again (and he will do it!), he does not lack in all his uncertainty the most sacred and secret certainty: “I lay me down and sleep in peace; for thou alone, Lord, helpest me, that I dwell in safety.” Glory shines out of his shame, strength out of his weakness. Once again: his safety, his honor, his power do not abide for a moment, but: “Only Thou, Lord!” But this is enough. We conclude plainly as we began: This is the exaltation of the righteous, who has run to the name of the Lord, that he is put on the way to pray aright the Lord’s Prayer, and to pray further: “Thy kingdom come! Thy will be done! Give us this day our daily bread! And forgive us our debts! And lead us not into temptation!” For who the “Thou” is, to whom with all these petitions he turns, can no longer be wholly hid from him.
God hath set eternity into the heart of man, without which he could not find out what God does from the beginning to the end.—Ecclesiastes 3:11.
Perhaps today we understand anew what the Bible tries to tell us through the word “eternity.” At any rate we are more ready to listen when it speaks of eternity, than we were in the years and decades before the war. Eternity is not time—in no sense of the word. It is neither the infinitely vast sum of all times, nor is it the so-called new, better time that, after the passing of all bad times, will finally come to be. Eternity is eternity; and by that we mean that it is beyond, hidden from all times, separated from them by a gulf that (at least from an earthly point of view) once for all divides eternity and time. This gulf can never be bridged by progress and development. For faith, which actually carries us across the abyss, has naught to do with progress and development or with any other upward struggle and effort of man. Faith comes from God—“God has set eternity in the heart of man.”
Perhaps we understand this saying a little better today. For we all have come out of a time in which men have tried, of their own might, to put eternity into their hearts. But today, through grievous sacrifices, we have been taught, more clearly than ever, that all these attempts of men have utterly failed. We do not say that even we will not listen when one speaks to us of the possibilities of progress and development, of the dawning of a new time. But the brightest and best of all times is none the less time; and time is not eternity—no time as such will arise and turn out of the way and course of all time. He who actually waits for eternity, tarries for eternity, tarries and waits, whether he knows it or not, for the end of times. Upon this let us meditate together.
Men speak much today of new times that are about to break in upon us. Gladly, oh so gladly, would we all leave the previous and present order and enter into a world and life of a new order. Gladly would we make a new beginning, as if we were crossing a broad river into a new and better haven. There always is something similar to such a crossing and new beginning. There are clefts in the life of a time as a whole, or of a man, which divide and separate the former from the latter; the old ends, the new begins. But, if we are candid, we must say: “The real, the new, the wholly different life and existence which we actually want and seek is not the new life that begins on the other side of the cleft or with a change of direction.” One may begin a new period in life and yet continue to live the old life. Even after conversion we have only apparently crossed the stream to the other bank. In fact those who claim to be converted, separate from the old world, are still living in the same surroundings in which they lived before conversion. In truth, after the deepest experience of
