Editorial April 28, 1923 Issue

Trust in God

Duncan Sinclair

TRUST in God can be fully established only on the basis of spiritual understanding. Before men can put their trust in God, they must know something about God, know something about the spiritual qualities which testify to the nature of His being. This knowledge or understanding of God has come as a revelation to men. First of all, certain among them made the discovery that there is only one God, thus breaking away from the belief in many gods; then there followed the revelation of the nature of the true and living God. To begin with, the Hebrews did not know Him as universal, impartial, and altogether good; they looked upon Deity as a tribal God, Jehovah,—a God powerful enough, indeed, to deliver them on occasion from the hands of their enemies and to punish them for their sins, yet a being who was especially interested in them, and who, accordingly, looked more particularly after their interests than those of other people.

Gradually the belief in Deity as a tribal God gave place to a truer concept of Him, as the prophets began to apprehend Him as Love, until we find in Isaiah His being extolled in the words: "Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and not be afraid: for the Lord Jehovah is my strength and my song; he also is become my salvation." Here the writer proclaims God as his salvation, as the One he can trust without fear: he recognizes God as his strength, rejoicing in the fact. Surely the faith that had expanded into the trust in which was to be found no fear must have been founded on an enlightened understanding of God. Similarly, when we read such expressions as the following from the Psalms we are forced to admit that whoever wrote them had more than glimpsed the fact that God is Love and that God is good, whether or not they had any notion of what Christian Science afterwards discovered, namely, that evil is unreal. "He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust: his truth shall be thy shield and buckler;" "Trust in him at all times; ye people, pour out your heart before him: God is a refuge for us,"—only two out of numerous passages which testify to an extraordinarily enlightened view of Deity.

The teachings of Christ Jesus all testify to the fact that God is worthy of our fullest trust. To the Master, God was "our Father which art in heaven." "Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing?" he said, "and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father. . . . Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows." Such expressions as these show exactly what the Prophet of Nazareth understood God's nature to be. Did he not mean to convey the truth that God's care for His creation is without limit, extending from the humblest forms of it to man himself? God could therefore be trusted, trusted even to the extent implied in the words of Paul to the Romans: "For I am persuaded, that neither death, not life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor height, nor depth, any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Paul was persuaded of God's perfect love; accordingly, his trust in God was immovably steadfast.

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