What think ye of Christ? Whose son is he? They say unto him, The Son of David-Matt. 22:42. The cry of blind Bartimaeus expressed a clear insight into something at least of our Lord’s unique character and power. Unless we know Him to be all that is involved in that august title, “the Son of David,” I do not think our cries to Him will ever be very earnest. It seems to me that they will only be earnest when, on the one hand, we recognize our need of a Savior, and, on the other hand, behold in Him the Savior that we need. I can quite understand-and ever see plenty of illustrations of it all around us-a kind of Christianity, real as far as it goes, but in my judgment very superficial, which has no adequate conception of what sin means, in its depth, in its power upon the subject of it, or in its consequences here and hereafter; and, that sense being lacking, the whole scale of Christianity, as it were, is dropped, and Christ comes to be, not, as I think, the New Testament tells us He is, the Incarnate Word of God, who for us men and for our salvation bore our sins in His own body on the tree, and was made sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him, but an Example, a Teacher, or a pure Model, or a Social Reformer, or the like. If men think of Him only as such, they will never cry to Him, “Have mercy upon me” [Ps. 31:9]. Oh! I pray you, whether you begin with looking into your own hearts and recognizing the crawling evils that have made their home there, and thence pass to the thought of the sort of Redeemer that you need and find in Christ-or whether you begin at the other side, and looking upon the revealed Christ in all the fullness in which He is represented to us in the Gospels, and from thence go back to ask yourselves the question, “What sort of man must I be if that is the kind of Savior that I need?”-I pray you ever to blend these two things together, the consciousness of your own need of redemption in His blood, and the assurance that by His death we are redeemed, and then to cry, “Lord! Have mercy upon me,” and claim your individual share in the wide-flowing blessing, to turn all the generalities of His grace into the particularities of your own possession. We have to go one by one to His Cross, and one by one to pass through the wicket-gate. We have not cried to Him as we ought if our cry is only, “Christ! Have mercy upon us. Lord! Have mercy upon us. Christ! Have mercy upon us.” We must be alone with Him, that into our own hearts we may receive all the fullness of His blessing; and our petition must be, “Thou Son of David! have mercy on me” [Mark 10:47]. Have you said that? In Celebration of Life in Him, Dr. Jim DeBruhl, gembeaux@bellsouth.net " Everything is wrong until God makes it right,"
