DR. FARRAR, with a great deal of pretentious language, appealing to his own perfect knowledge, his own deep sense of responsibility, and speaking in the sight of God (he says) and of the Savior, perhaps of angels-he would hardly be so narrowminded and illiberal as to speak of " elect angels " with Paul- and of what never crossed Paul's narrow mind, " the spirits of the dead "-declares that not one of the words, " damnation," " hell," or " everlasting," should be found in the English Bible.
Now with (I dare say) less knowledge than Canon Farrar, no unusual conscientiousness, still in the fear of God, I beg leave to say that what Canon Farrar says is entirely unfounded, in the essential point wholly untrue. I am not, in a note, going to enter into much Greek or Hellenistic learning, though both refute what Canon Farrar says as to " everlasting "; nor is there need. One passage suffices to show as to this word that his statement, with all its pretension, is false. " The things which are seen are temporal (proskaira); but the things which are not seen are eternal " (aionia; 2 Cor. 4:1818While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal. (2 Corinthians 4:18)); that is, eternal is the opposite of what is for a time.
Need I quote more? Let the reader take a Concordance, and see the passages where " everlasting life " is used (or eternal), and say if everlasting should not be there. And note, " eternal life " in the Person of Christ was with the Father; 1 John 1:22(For the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and show unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us;) (1 John 1:2). Is " eternal Spirit " wrong? (Heb. 9:1414How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? (Hebrews 9:14).) God has called us to His eternal glory; 1 Peter 5:1010But the God of all grace, who hath called us unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that ye have suffered a while, make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you. (1 Peter 5:10). God lives forever and ever (Rev. 5:1414And the four beasts said, Amen. And the four and twenty elders fell down and worshipped him that liveth for ever and ever. (Revelation 5:14)), the everlasting God; Rom. 16:2626But now is made manifest, and by the scriptures of the prophets, according to the commandment of the everlasting God, made known to all nations for the obedience of faith: (Romans 16:26). I might multiply quotations; but these suffice to prove, or even the first alone, that the statement of Dr. Farrar, with all his boasted knowledge and conscientiousness, is, as to this word, either ignorance or dishonesty. Would Dr. Farrar in the Old Testament change the word " everlasting " in Psalm 90, " From everlasting to everlasting thou art God "? is " eternal power and Godhead " wrong? (Rom. 1:2020For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: (Romans 1:20).) Is " eternal glory " (2 Tim. 2: to), eternal salvation, eternal redemption, wrong? Is " everlasting God, Jehovah, the Creator of the ends of the earth," wrong?
Rom. 5; compare 1 John 4. And He is the earnest of our coming likeness to Christ in glory; 2 Cor. 5.
The Spirit may rebuke and humble us as to consistency with the place we are in. Thank God He does. But He never can give a testimony in our souls contrary to, or other than, the place where perfect redemption has placed us, that redemption which has brought Him down to dwell in us. Such a thought would be making Him give a false testimony. But the Spirit is truth.
" We have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear, but the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father." It is not merely the fact of a new life communicated, but the consciousness of the position in which redemption has placed those who have that life. " I go to my Father, and your Father, to my God, and your God." It is not only that the Son has quickened us, but that Christ has finished the work given Him to do-is entered as man into a wholly new place (where Adam, innocent, was not), and, being glorified, the Spirit gives us the consciousness of the relationships into which He has brought us. And this place is the fruit of a work done outside us, though those who partake in it must also be born again, and is known through the Holy Ghost given as the seal of our faith in that work, but of nothing else. But the question of experience does come in in the word, and that connects itself with the difference of flesh and Spirit. It behooves us to consider what flesh is. What it is in its evil nature, I need not dwell on here; it is the evil nature in which we are, as born of sinful Adam; but as regards our relationship another consideration comes in.
In this sense, What is it to be in the flesh? It is to be in relationship with God on the ground of our natural responsibility as men, as children of fallen Adam. It is, as to our moral state-which in itself is true-making the disposition of God towards us to depend on what we are towards Him. Of this the law is the perfect rule. It says, if conscience is awakened, I am such and such: God will be so and so towards me. Grace is on the opposite ground: God has been, and is, through Christ such and such, and I shall be so and so, as the fruit of it. But this changes everything.
Take the parable of the prodigal son. When he came to himself, you hear much about him; he owns his sin, that he is perishing, and sets out to his father, for confidence (not 5: 11. In this part our actual sins are the ground of God's dealings. All have sinned. In the second part, chapter 5: 12, to the end of chapter 8, this is not the case. Our state as in the flesh is spoken of, and then as in Christ or the Spirit. " By the disobedience of one many were made sinners." The question there is not the forgiveness of sins, but death to sin, as having died with Him. All the development of this part is experience connected with self, and practical. The first part is not, but the effect of a work done for us and outside us, and God's love now known as the source of it. Christ was delivered for our sins, and raised again for our justification: therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God. In chapter 5 we have the conscious happiness of the believer connected with that work for us, and God known in love through it, but nothing connected with our state of experience. Here, first, the Holy Ghost is mentioned, God's love being shed abroad in our hearts by it. The presence of the Holy Ghost in the Christian is assumed. But it is the love of God known by it, not, as in the second part, how and what it works in us, though it does surely work in us when given; but to connect the second part of Romans with the first as a continuous process is a mistake.
Guilt by our acts is a different thing from our state as children of Adam. In one we are guilty, and (unless justified) come into judgment; in the other we are lost. The effect of the work of Christ is to clear forever all our sins away. By one offering He hath perfected forever them that are sanctified (eis to dienekes). So that, once purged, we have no more conscience of sins. Blessed is the man to whom God imputeth no sin. They are remembered no more, and as, when He had by Himself purged our sins, He sat down on the right hand of the Majesty in the heavens, we are, besides being purged, risen in Him in the new standing which is the effect of His redemption for man.
Now the sealing of the Holy Ghost, based on forgiveness, gives the intelligence and consciousness of this new position. The idea of God's imputing guilt to us is impossible (unless, perhaps, in some extreme case when delivered to Satan as a chastisement). But that is not all. By the Spirit, by the gift of which we are sealed, we know we are sons, crying, Abba, Father; Gal. 4. We know we are in Christ, and Christ in us (John 14), and the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts; with Christ and sonship developed. Our bodies are temples of the Holy Ghost which we have of God, and are bought with a price, hence to glorify God in our bodies. We have thus the gift of the Holy Ghost before us, characterizing by His presence Christianity and the Christian. The difficulty which arises in people's minds has for its origin, that the effects of His presence necessarily connect themselves with our experience. It could not be otherwise; the Holy Ghost could not dwell in us without producing certain effects on our minds. It is a present power when a believer is sealed working in us, and we are apt to judge of it by looking at it in our minds, and confusion comes in. Seeing whether we are walking up to the privilege is all right, but that is quite a different thing. It is not a finished work like Christ's outside of us, and having absolute divine value in God's sight, but a living power working in us, whose presence is the seal, with which we are sealed.
It is of moment to distinguish between the sealing and the operation of Him who is the seal when dwelling in us. God sets His seal on those who believe on the ground of the perfect work of Christ, and His being glorified in consequence. Of this John 7, Acts 2, and the day of Pentecost are witness. They were believers, and for a good while, and they were to wait at Jerusalem to be endued with power from on high. They believed on Christ as one dead, risen and glorified, and that faith was sealed; but the work was fully accomplished and Christ fully glorified, or the Holy Ghost would not have been there. The effect was to follow. They belonged to God according to the perfect work of Christ, and were sealed as such. So the redemption of Israel to God as a people was absolute, independently of the exercises of the wilderness and Canaan. The presence of the Holy Ghost was the immediate consequence of the perfectness of Christ's work and glory, where faith in it was, without any question of experience or a work within, save that they believed. It was the seal of faith. As a seal it had nothing to do with experience.
Here it may be well to notice the Epistle to the Romans, confusion as to which produces confusion in the minds of saints.
As is generally acknowledged now, and certainly is the case, there are two distinct treatises in the doctrinal part of Romans. That which speaks of guilt, and grace blessedly meeting it through Christ's death and bloodshedding, ends in chapter might be partakers of His new risen life, as God breathed on Adam, their understanding already opened to understand the Scriptures, they were to wait for the Holy Ghost coming down upon them.
The world knew nothing of it, but in its effects. It was for those only who already believed on Him, putting them consciously in the place in which He was with God. That other Comforter, which in a certain sense took the place of Christ, though only to reveal Him more fully, and as a heavenly Christ who had accomplished their redemption, and through the efficacy of that, was the object of their hope in glory, of which He was Himself the earnest and the revealer. This was for those only who took part with a rejected Savior, for believers. There were those who believing had received life through His name, who lived, through hearing, through grace, the voice of the Son of God. They must have been, to see and enter the kingdom; the Jews must, to enjoy hereafter the earthly promises as the Lord showed to Nicodemus. But the Spirit was to come new when redemption had been accomplished, and Christ exalted as man to the right hand of God, to take the things of Christ and show them to the disciples; and all that the Father had was His, and to make them know that all He had as the exalted man was theirs.
All this is something quite different from my being born again, or even that special quickening in the power of Christ in resurrection, with being born of God by His word of truth (John 20:2222And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost: (John 20:22)), save as this was necessary to a person's receiving it, and that the same Holy Ghost operates in and by this life when He dwells in us. Of the former I shall speak. The connection of the given Holy Ghost with this life, when dwelling in our bodies, is manifest in Rom. 8 That life is not separated from its divine source, when He dwells in us, though His personally dwelling in us as a divine Person is another thing, also spoken of in Rom. 8 as the Spirit itself. If He was our life in Person, He would be an incarnation of the Holy Ghost in us, which is futile on the face of it. We are born of the Spirit, but what is born of the Spirit is not the Spirit, though it be spirit, that is, characterized morally by the same nature; John 3. In this sense we are made partakers of the divine nature. The Colossians treats of life and does not speak of the Holy Ghost; Ephesians does repeatedly, and we get contrast with flesh characterizing the epistle, and union Further, we have seen that until redemption was accomplished, and there was the man that did God's will, sitting at God's right hand in consequence of it, the Holy Ghost (spoken of as constituting and characterizing Christianity by His presence) was not yet. So the disciples of John at Ephesus, " We have not so much as heard whether the Holy Ghost is." He was sent down the witness of Christ, as man, being at the right hand of God.
This is of all importance. The point of departure of Christianity was man's taking a new place in righteousness on high, consequent on redemption being accomplished where sin and death and Satan's power and God's judgment were; that Man being Son of God withal. Accordingly Christ received as man the Holy Ghost on being exalted on high, not then for Himself as when perfect on earth, but to confer on those who believed, putting them in relation with Himself and what was heavenly on high.
Scripture is clear as to its being only for believers. John 7, already quoted, states the fact: " the Spirit which they that believed on him should receive."
But it is stated more strongly in John 14:16, 17,16And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; 17Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you. (John 14:16‑17) " I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you forever; the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth [abideth] with you, and shall be in you." We have there the Spirit as the constant portion of the saints, sent consequent on Christ as man being exalted to the right hand of God, whom He received anew on high to confer on His own, and who could not be thus present down here until Christ was so exalted. The Son had been here, and was here to be received by all who knew of Him. Men would not have Him, but that is another thing; but the Spirit is not for the world. He may by God's chosen instruments announce the gospel to it. He was known by being with us ever, and dwelling in us. Men were and are born of the Spirit, but the Holy Ghost Himself coming down is another thing. This happened on the day of Pentecost. They were not to go forth till then, but to tarry at Jerusalem till they were endued with power from on high, to wait for the promise of the Father which they had heard of Christ; Acts 1:4, 54And, being assembled together with them, commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father, which, saith he, ye have heard of me. 5For John truly baptized with water; but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence. (Acts 1:4‑5); chap. 2. Clean through Christ's word, who had withal already breathed on them that they Christianity, which as I have said is characterized by His presence, could not exist until Christ was glorified (John 7:3939(But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive: for the Holy Ghost was not yet given; because that Jesus was not yet glorified.) (John 7:39)); and Christ when exalted received the Holy Ghost as to the exalted man anew in order to its being sent down; Acts 2:3333Therefore being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he hath shed forth this, which ye now see and hear. (Acts 2:33). This is confirmed as to its being sent by the words of the Lord Himself. " It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I go away, I will send him unto you," John 16:77Nevertheless I tell you the truth; It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you. (John 16:7).
Whither He went we know; John 14:44And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know. (John 14:4). The Comforter is sent by the Father in Christ's name (John 14:2626But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you. (John 14:26)), and by Christ from the Father; chap. 15: 26. But these are details. And this presence of the Holy Ghost was so real and distinctive a thing, His personal presence definitely characterizing Christianity as such, that it is said in John 7, " The Holy Ghost was not yet, for Jesus was not yet glorified." " Given " is added in italics, which is all very well for the general sense; but I give what is literally said, that the full distinct force of the words, the words of that Spirit, may be before us. Of course it is not that the Holy Ghost did not exist: no Christian would think of such a thing. And the Old Testament bears witness from creation on of the existence and operation of the Spirit in all that God did upon the earth. But as the Son of God created all things, still, as He Himself tells, did not come personally down here to dwell among us till the incarnation, so, though the Spirit of God wrought from the garnishing of the heavens, and the brooding on chaotic waters, He did not come to dwell personally down here until there was a glorified Man sitting at the right hand of God. As to the Son it could be said, " I came forth from the Father and came into the world, again I leave the world and go to the Father "; so it could be said by Christ of the Spirit, " If I go away, I will send him unto you, and when he is come," etc. He was promised in the Old Testament. The promise was accomplished on the day of Pentecost, and Christianity exists.
The texts we have briefly referred to have brought before us some very weighty points. The Lord Himself was anointed and sealed, and this given as a sign that He was the baptizer with the Holy Ghost, and giving occasion to John the Baptist to bear record that Christ was the Son of God.