The following is a guest post by Rob Golding, Pastor of First Artesia Christian Reformed Church.
Couples who never have doubts about one another rarely make it because they don’t have an accurate understanding of each other; they’re in puppy love. “He’s perfect in every way” was said by more divorcées than lifelong couples. But when a bride sees the shortcomings of her groom, yet decides to trust him anyway, true love is formed. Love is more than a “sure thing.” Love is spelled R-I-S-K. Once this love-risk is taken, the love of the couple takes on more doubt about the future and places its heart outside the bodies of the bride and groom—they have children. Now assurance is even less secure. Will they obey us, not run away, not get into drugs, keep the faith, or prematurely die? Doubt is the gunpowder that causes the heart to explode outward and into the lives of others.
In the same way, our doubts about God propel our love to Him. Anyone can love God when he is sure that God loves Him and is near. But what about the one who says, “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?” (Psalm 13:1, ESV)? What does his love for God mean? How does it compare to the one who loves the God who is close and abundant in blessing? More in every way!
Christ’s obedience is not most prominent in his early years learning at the knee of Joseph and eating the bread of Mary. Perhaps that is why the Gospel writers thought His youth was unimportant to record. Christ’s obedience is most clearly seen on the Via Dolorosa. We see Him obey most clearly when He carries the instrument of His own death; when He is abandoned by those closest to Him, even Peter; when He is whipped, beaten, scorned, and spat upon; when He is raised above the earth for all to see, utterly alone except for the company of two heinous and wicked men, as if by association He would be brought even more shame as He is paraded on a pole; and when He looks into a dark sky and sees not His Father’s smile (for in that moment the Father’s love was not annihilated but hidden) but God’s warrior-scowl for sin. In this moment, do we not see more clearly, more starkly than any moment in the life of Christ, His love for the Father?
As the eternally begotten Son of God, the Logos never doubted the Father any more than the image in the mirror can doubt the one standing before it. Yet, in His human nature, Christ experienced a non-sinful moment of doubt, so powerful that the Gospel writers record it in Aramaic, something they never do—“Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” Fulfilling the type of Christ in Psalm 22, Jesus demonstrated the reason for the Psalmist’s doubts, and ours.
Our sovereign Father is not incapable of parting the clouds and showing us His face. He could fill our hearts with joy and hope in Him for every moment of every day. Yet our doubts are part of His sovereign will. Christ shows us that the purpose of our doubts is to demonstrate our love to Him. When David said, “How long will you hide your face from me?” (Psalm 13:1) he didn’t end the Psalm. He continued, “But I have trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation” (Psalm 13:5). Job said God “slayed” him, but he endured the blade of God and returned the praise of God, “Though he slay me, I will hope in him” (Job 13:15).
Why does God write doubts into the stories of our lives? Doubt is the fuel of love. When you worship Him through your doubts, you cast yourself upon the Rock of Ages. You jump from the hundredth floor of the burning building of sin and pray that He will catch you. You give up your life that you might find it. Doubt is the only way such desperate reliance upon God can spring forth from a heart of stone. When you serve God while you doubt God you prove that you love God.
When we arrive at this point, Satan must give up. He has no hope in snatching the soul that loves the God it doubts. As Lewis’s Screwtape said to his demonic apprentice, “Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.” ― C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, Letter VIII.
Only those who love God through Christ will be saved. And doubt is the propellant of love.
-Rob Golding
The Fight of Faith 