Our attention was called to a certain greeting card which was used somewhat extensively in Christendom at the end of last year. The message it conveyed was entitled, "No Room in the Inn." It contained some well-turned phrases to express beautiful sentiments which would pass for true Christianity with most people. The birth, life, and teachings of Jesus were mentioned with religious nicety, and even the fact that He was brought "at last to Calvary" was not forgotten; but entirely missing from the card was His title of "Lord," any mention of His atoning death, His blood-shedding, or His resurrection. He was called "the Master" and "Christ," but not "Lord." This should not be surprising, for no man can truly address Jesus as Lord but by the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 12:3).
The most revealing sentence in the article is this: "At the inn they crowded Christ out because they never guessed who He would be." This at once betrays the state of soul of the man who wrote it; he must never have had a true glimpse of the glory of His Person. And yet he adds, "But we have no such excuse. We know Jesus." This can be challenged, for to know Him is life eternal; but to know Him only as a Teacher, a Master, or even Christ, is not to know Him.
Think of what is implied in the remark, "they never guessed who He would be." The fact is that they did not know who He was. He never was less in His infancy than as a teacher. He was God, and this He could never cease being. "And the Word was God" (John 1:1)—absolutely, and nothing less at any time, although He took upon. Him the form of a man. "The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us." John 1:14; J.N.D. Trans.
The man who can write as did the author of "No Room in the Inn," evidently does not know Jesus-who He is. The publican, Zacchaeus (whom the religious Pharisees shunned), being divinely instructed, "sought to see Jesus who He was" (Luke 19:3). Happy man! He found Him as a Savior, so that the Lord Jesus could say, "This day is salvation come to this house." Happy man! He found Jesus and learned who He was, although the Pharisees of that day learned it not. The same is true today of the modern religionists who relegate Him to being merely a teacher or a reformer. We might well inquire of the rank modernist, Harry Emerson Fosdick, who authored those derogatory words, "What or whom did He become?" If He was not God incarnate from His birth, He never was; and if He were anything less, mankind' would have been doomed to eternal damnation without exception.
Job, as one of the ancients, knew better than these modern preachers, for his plaintive note was: "For He [God] is not a man, as I am, that I should answer Him, and we should come together in judgment. Neither is there any daysman betwixt us, that might lay His hand upon us both." Job 9:32, 33. Job had some sense of the majesty and holiness of his God, and he bemoaned the fact that he could not talk with God as with man, and that there was no one between them to come into the breach. He wanted one who could lay his hand upon God and also upon man; now it is plainly evident that no one could lay his hand upon God unless he was God, nor could he reach down to man unless he was man. Oh, glorious mystery! such a One has come, for there is "one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus." 1 Tim. 2:5. Modern religionists reject the Lord Jesus as God, and as Savior, and thereby incur the wrath of God (John 3:36), while another branch of Christendom introduces various and sundry other mediators and intercessors to the dishonor of God's one and only Savior of sinners, and thereby sends souls on the wrong road—one that leads to destruction.
Many religious people are as willfully ignorant of who the Lord Jesus was and is as were the world leaders at the time of His first coming. In their ignorance then they "crucified the Lord of glory" (1 Cor. 2:8). Think of all the displayed glory of God in the celestial abodes, and the Lord Jesus was "the Lord of glory." The saint is lost in adoring wonder when he thinks of the greatness of the Person who subjected Himself to scorn, ignominy, and rejection here. What an unfathomable mystery—"the Lord of glory," and yet subjected to all the indignities that the rebel heart of man could devise. The words "crucified" and "Lord of glory" express contradictory and incongruous thoughts. The one describes the form of death meted out to the lowest and meanest—to the worst of criminals—while the other speaks of Him as head of all those realms of bliss. How could it be that such took place? It was only by His marvelous grace that He stooped so low that He allowed wicked human creatures to thus handle Him.
Another incongruity of terms is seen in Acts 3:14 and 15: "But ye denied the Holy One and the Just, and desired a murderer to be granted unto you; and killed the Prince [or Originator] of life, whom God hath raised from the dead; whereof we are witnesses." How could men kill the originator of life? and yet this is what they did in their blind hatred of Him whom God sent into the world. They counseled to put to death the One in whom they lived and moved and had their being (Acts 17:28). The creator and sustainer of all things (Heb. 1:2, 3) was taken by wicked hands and nailed to the cross in the all too-obvious determination to take His life. And insofar as they were capable of it, they did it, although in the final moments He cried out with a victor's cry of strength and laid down His own life.
But it was not possible that He should be held by death (Acts 2:24), so He came forth in mighty victory over it in what is the best attested miracle of all, for the disciples who knew Him were His witnesses. But this same Harry Emerson Fosdick who saw not who He was when on earth, has denied His bodily resurrection.
To deny the glory of His Person, His atoning death on the cross, His blood-shedding there, and His marvelous resurrection and ascension, is to reject the very foundation of the gospel. It is plainly a rejection of the Lord Jesus Christ. And those who do this will leave this world in their sins, as those to whom He once said, "If ye believe not that I AM,... ye shall die in your sins." John 8:24. Their portion will be to meet Him (who would have been their Savior) as their judge and hear that awful sentence, "Depart from Me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels." Matt. 25:41.
Oh, poor deluded men! The god of this world has blinded their eyes (1 Cor. 4:4). And yet, many of these false guides preach in His name and extol Him as a teacher or example! Blind leaders of the blind, who with their deceived followers will fall into the ditch (Matt. 15:14)!
How happy we who can rejoice and sing:
"How wondrous the glories that meet
In Jesus, and from His face shine!
His love is eternal and sweet,
'Tis human, 'tis also divine.
"His glory—not only God's Son -
In manhood He had His full part -
And the union of both joined in one
Form the fountain of love in His heart.
"The merits and worth of His blood
Have freed us from hell and from fear,
That we, as the blest sons of God,
May make His good pleasure our care.
"Oh then may this union and love
Make us walk in the service of Heaven,
'Mid obedience and suffering to prove
That we to the Lamb have been given."
#61, Little Flock Hymnbook