Strict regard for rule is of the essence of righteousness. It is by the revelation of law that God awakens in us the sentiment of righteousness; by His undeviating adherence to law that sentiment is stimulated and confirmed. The essence of tenderness is regard for persons. Love contemplates the wants of living beings, and seeks to supply them. God is righteous; He is moved and controlled by regard for what is right. God is love; He is moved and swayed by regard for all His creatures. It is God's object to bring us to the joyful discovery, wherein we rest for time and for eternity, that His regard for right and His regard for us are at one; that tenderness and righteousness are in harmony; that all the opposition is in our ignorance, our perverted feeling; that the strictest rule is the truest tenderness. Consider some of the ways in which God reveals this to us.
I. Parental rule is one of these ways. The government of every pious household is in measure a revelation of the government of God. We have all a child's hold on God's affections, all a child's need of discipline and correction, all a child's power to grieve Him; and He has all a father's kind determination to train us in right.
II. The tenderness of God's strict rule is revealed to us again in the experience of life. We find that the dearest love may mislead and ruin; unregulated affection is a shameful and destructive thing. Regard for right is the truest personal regard. God would shield men from woes unnumbered, and therefore has He made His laws so severe and certain, and therefore does He subdue us to His laws.
III. This revelation, again, is granted in prayer. One of the great ends of prayer is to reveal to us the tenderness of God. The order of human life, with its partings and its pains, the law by which we suffer, appears to us in a new aspect. God's mercy is seen not in interfering for our sakes with the order of His providence; that order is itself most merciful. God's tenderness is revealed not in saving us from tribulation, but in saving us by tribulation.
IV. The tenderness of God's strict law is revealed to us in the Gospel of Christ. It is personal regard for man which we see pre-eminently in Jesus, yet who so much as He makes us feel the constraining bond of righteousness? He delivers men from the penalties of law; but it is to awaken in them a reverence for it, deeper and more solemn than any experience of penalty can be. He frees them from its pains by transforming its painfulness into an entire devotion to it. There dawns upon us the overwhelming conception that surrounding law is surrounding love; that law is the highest expression of love.
V. The closing verses of the Psalm declare the blessed effects of this discovery in a true and. fruitful, in a trusting, an intelligent and obedient life, in a life hallowed by God's smile and crowned with His constant benediction.
A. Mackennal, Christ's Healing Touch,p. 57.
Reference: Psalms 85:10; Psalms 85:11. Clergyman's Magazine,vol. xviii., p. 143.