If we turn to John 11, we have a different but most instructive display of Jesus on the earth. For what is seen there is no remedial measure in a living Messiah. Nothing of the kind could adequately meet the depth of the ruin even for those who believed in Him and were loved of Him. Death must take its course. It was no use merely to heal: man was too far gone. The Lord therefore remains till all was over, and Lazarus slept in death. Jesus saw things in the light of day: this sickness was not unto death but for God’s glory, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby. He awaits therefore His Father’s will and goes to raise the dead. Martha had no just estimate of the power of death any more than of the Lord’s glory:
“Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died; but I know that even now, whatsoever thou wilt ask of God, God will give it thee.” Neither did her orthodox creed meet the case: “I know that he shall rise again at the resurrection at the last day. Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this? She saith unto him, Yea, Lord: I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world.” No; Martha did not enter in, though a believer, and this because she had Jewish thoughts of Christ. Present resurrection power in Him was beyond her. She went her way and sends Mary, who, if she did not yet anticipate His power better than Martha, at least fell down at His feet, and wept as did the very Jews. Death was there; and now Jesus was there. He was the Son, very God, yet estimated death as none could but Himself Who, a man, was the eternal life which was with the Father. He groaned in His spirit, apparently with the strongest, indignation and pain at the power of death over the spirit of man, and troubled Himself or shuddered. In divine grace He weighed and felt it all in spirit—wept, too, as they asked Him to come and see where the dead saint lay. Little did Jewish comment penetrate the reality; but the more did Jesus groan in Himself as He came to the grave, whence, spite of Martha’s unbelief, the glory of God was seen in Lazarus coming forth at the voice of the Son. Nothing can be more blessed than His sympathy in entering into the sorrow and power of death, Himself all the while conscious of the power of life, but using it only as the Sent of the Father. This introduces into a new scene through the door of resurrection, when death has closed all connection between God and nature. Decent and dull orthodoxy finds its prototype in Martha; value for the person of Christ may be slow, like Mary, but, waiting on Jesus, at length sees light and life in His light.
If we look, again, at the doctrinal statements of scripture, Hebrews 2 shows us the singularly honored place of man in the person of Jesus; according to Psalm 8 “But now we see not yet all things put under him. But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, for [or, on account of] the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor; that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man.” Incarnation could not deliver, all important as it is. The person of the Deliverer was thereby manifested; but death was the pivot of blessing, if man was to be brought out of sin according to God: no otherwise could there be a righteous basis, for thus only is found a due dealing with our evil before God. “For it became him for whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings” (verse 10). Thus it was fitting that Christ should pass on high through sufferings for many sons God is bringing to glory. Their state demanded it; grace made it His path. But there is the greatest care to guard against irreverence toward the Lord Jesus. “For both he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one; for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren” (verse 11). The phrase “all of one” is exceedingly and designedly abstract. Still He is the Sanctifier, as risen from the dead; for so the quotation of Psalm 22:2222I will declare thy name unto my brethren: in the midst of the congregation will I praise thee. (Psalm 22:22) in Hebrews 2:1212Saying, I will declare thy name unto my brethren, in the midst of the church will I sing praise unto thee. (Hebrews 2:12) proves. Then first did our Lord put the disciples definitely in this relationship (see John 20:1717Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God. (John 20:17)). “All of one” means, not His entering into their state, but His taking them into His. The foundation was laid in His death: as risen, He at once associates them with Himself. They were “all of one” thus. It is not men as such, but “the sanctified” (οἱ ἁγιαζόμενοτ). He does not call them His brethren till He became a man; and only then distinctly when risen, according to the passages cited. The nearest approach before was when He stretched forth His hand toward His disciples and said, “Behold, my mother and my brethren. For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother.” But this is vague compared with “Go to my brethren,” connected as it is with His ascending to His Father and their Father, and to His God and their God. It is manifest also that the Son’s incarnation is, in verse 14, introduced as the necessary means for making void through death the power of the devil, and delivering those who were in bondage all their lifetime through fear of death. Alone He wrought this mighty work, by virtue of which, when risen, He gathers the sanctified into association with Himself; but in both as really man, for such the children were.
Power, the power of God, was in Christ. Was it the less bright because it shone through a life of absolute dependence on His Father and the sorrows of His unfathomable humiliation in pity to man, love to His own, and devotedness to God’s glory? Look at that extreme point of it all, the cross, the foolishness and the weakness of God. Do they appreciate it who unwittingly slight the rights of Christ’s person? “I have power [not δύναμις merely but ἐξουσία, title or right as well as power] to take it again.” Yet was it exercised only in obedience, as He blessedly adds, “This commandment have I received of my Father.” That Christ therefore “had in His nature not only a possibility and aptitude, but also a necessity of dying,” is a statement so unsound that the reputation of a man, able and learned as Bishop Pearson was, will not avail to consecrate it. (Expos. of the Creed. Art. 4) Had he confined himself to the more guarded language with which the next paragraph concludes, there might he nothing to object; for it is agreed that “by voluntary election He took upon Him a necessity of dying.” But this is a very different proposition from having that necessity in the nature He assumed. It is John 10:1818No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father. (John 10:18) which is cited in the opening of this latter paragraph. Even here, however, the doctrine is exceptionable. The short time in which it pleased the Lord to die (so surprising to Pilate when reported), coupled with the loud voice with which He cried just before (so marvelous to the centurion who heard), points to the practical testimony of His power in death as in life, not to the total exhaustion of bodily vigor as the effect of previous sorrows, to which the Bishop refers it—I might almost say more naturalistic than the heathen judge or the heathen soldier. To say that when by an act of His will He had submitted to the death of the cross... it was not in the power of His soul to continue any longer vitality to the body (i.e., that when He had voluntarily given Himself to die, He could no longer live), is true indeed, but very like a truism. But that from the first He had in His nature the necessity of dying, or that at the last His vigor was so exhausted that He must therefore die, is to cloud the truth of divine glory in His person by assigning to it a dissolution necessarily inherent in His humanity. It directly touches atonement also; for how deeply is God’s grace in His death undermined, if He merely anticipated on the cross a death which must have been in some shape within a generation later? To me, I confess, the scheme ominously symbolizes with the taunts of some who surrounded the cross: “He saved others; himself he cannot save.”
The life of fallen humanity is doomed; but our Lord goes infinitely farther than negativing any such constitutional necessity in His human nature. He claims a power beyond Adam unfallen, or any other creature. None but the Holy One of God, and a Divine person withal, could say, “I have power to lay down my life,” &c.
Hence the Bishop’s note to the preceding page (though he justly insists, in the text as well as note, on the reality of the Lord’s death, and, of course, the separation of His soul from His body) is utterly beneath the intimations of the scriptures which he quotes. For all this eminent man draws from them is, that they teach not a mere λειποθυμἱα, or deathlike swoon, of which we hear in the later Greek writers, but an absolute expiration; and therefore, he thinks, we have not only the ἐξέπνευσεν of Mark and Luke, but in Matthew ἀφῆκεν τὸ πνεῦμα, and in John παρέδωκεν τὸ πνεῦμα. Of course, his inference is true; but what intelligent believer will say that it represents the truth here revealed? Who but Jesus, Jehovah-Messiah, could be said to yield up or dismiss His spirit? Who but a divine person, the Word made flesh, could deliver up His spirit? Only He who had before asserted calmly His full authority— “I lay down my life that I might take it again. No man [no one] taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay down my life, and I have power to take it again.” The Nestorianism, which divides the person, is as dangerous and destructive as the Eutychianism, which confounds the two natures to the overthrow of both. From the conception Deity was never severed from the humanity of Christ, no, not even when His spirit was in Paradise and His body lay in the tomb.
The truth is, that the statements of the great Anglican expositor of the Creed are not trustworthy as to the (if possible) still more essential and critical truth of the Son’s proper and supreme Deity. One can well imagine the indignant scorn of the younger clergy, whose impulse is at all cost to defend their textbook. Graver men too among the better sort may be slow to accept such a charge. With such slowness one sympathizes, provided there be along with it an honest and open heart to adhere to holy scripture as the sole unerring standard of truth. However this be, the doctrine under Art. 1 is, that the Father has the divine essence of Himself, the Son by communication from the Father. “From whence He acknowledgeth that He is from him, that he liveth by him, that the bather gave him to have life in himself, and generally referreth all things to him, as received from him (John 7:2727Howbeit we know this man whence he is: but when Christ cometh, no man knoweth whence he is. (John 7:27) [? 29]; 6:57; 5:26). Wherefore in this sense some of the ancients have not stuck to interpret those words, ‘The Father is greater than I,’ of Christ as the second person in the blessed Trinity; but still with reference not unto his essence but his generation, by which he is understood to have his being from the Father, who only hath it of himself, and is the original of all power and essence in the Son. I can of mine own self do nothing, saith our Savior (John 5:3030I can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is just; because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me. (John 5:30)), because he is not of himself,” &c. At the end of the paragraph the Bishop repeats the texts (John 5:2626For as the Father hath life in himself; so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself; (John 5:26) and 6:57), and enforces the same doctrine in the following paragraphs.
Now it is certain that Pearson misinterprets these scriptures, on which he (following some if not most of the fathers) rests this strange doctrine—a doctrine which soon turns to the denial of the eternal Sonship of Christ, and, in more audacious minds, to Arianism. The real starting-point in the passages of John is the Son, but viewed in the position He took here below: the Word, Who was God, become flesh, Who refused the very appearance of independence, was come down to do the will of Him that sent Him, did nothing of Himself but only whatsoever He saw the Father do, or what the Father assigned Him only to do. So absolute was His dependence that He could say, “The living Father hath sent me, and I live because of the Father” (διἁ τὸν π., not διἀ τοῦ π. αs the English Version would require). Still less difficulty is there in the reference to John 7:28-2928Then cried Jesus in the temple as he taught, saying, Ye both know me, and ye know whence I am: and I am not come of myself, but he that sent me is true, whom ye know not. 29But I know him: for I am from him, and he hath sent me. (John 7:28‑29). It is His mission, not subordination in the Godhead, which is in question. I think then that I am warranted in saying, that, throughout, the perversion of these scriptures is gross and perilous in the highest degree. What can be worse than habitually applying to the intrinsic glory of Christ the language which He, in lowly love, uttered in His place of voluntary subjection on earth? Can any man taught of God dispute the fact that Pearson fell into this error? The same John, who in the Gospel lets us hear the Savior say that the Father has given to the Son to have life in Himself, in his first Epistle shows us “that eternal life, which was with [not, from] the Father and was manifested unto as:” not a hint of the Father’s giving Him to have life in Himself save here below.
Hence even some Romanist theologians are in this respect sounder, if not more candid, than the “great divines” of the Anglican platform. Compare for instance the apologies for the Ante-Nicene fathers (Justin M., Clement of Alexandria, Origen, &c.) in Bishop Bull’s Jud. Cath. Eccles., with the frank (?) admissions of Petavius in his Opus de Theol. Dogm. I fear that the acute Jesuit did not find the admission painful; for he was thereby enabled to insist the more keenly on that which is the foundation of his own system (and alas of many not there yet), that it is the church’s function to decide and define what the truth is that man has to believe unto salvation. The Anglicans, on the contrary, from the first have ever been under bondage to the earlier Fathers and Councils; and hence their leaders have never freed themselves from the lowering influence of the semi-Platonism which tinctures those ancient writings, and gives their admirers a wrong bias in the interpretation of scripture. For my part, fully allowing that the church (where and what is it now?) is, or ought to be, the pillar and ground of the truth, I believe that the truth is already definitely revealed in the scriptures, and with far greater clearness, fullness, and perfection than in any human formularies, either of the fourth and fifth centuries, or of the sixteenth and seventeenth. To receive, keep, and witness the truth is the obligation and joy of the church; to declare with authority what the truth is, belongs to God and His word; to teach and preach the truth, the Lord raises up and sends His servants. If we mix things divine and human in the faith, it comes to the same disastrous effect as mingling works with grace for justification; being false in principle, the practical issue is, that the divine element is neglected, and the human one becomes an idol. “Our church” usurps the place not of God’s church only, but, more or less, of His word. (To be continued, D.V.)