Foundations of the Faith: Key Teachings
Frank Binford Hole
Table of Contents
The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible
Of all those great items of scriptural truth which are fundamental in their character, the one which forms our present theme stands first, for the simple reason that whatever may have been the excellence and authority of those revelations of God and of His will originally delivered orally by our Lord and His apostles, except we have, now that they are gone, those revelations conveyed to us in writings, divinely inspired and therefore of full authority, we have nothing worthy of being called the faith today. At best we should have had but an ill-assorted mass of recollections and traditions, handed on from generation to generation. Until therefore the inspiration and authority of the Bible are fully and firmly settled in our souls, it is hardly worth proceeding to establish from its pages those further truths which at first sight may appear to be of a still more fundamental character.
Let us open the Bible, then, with the simple thought of ascertaining what it has to say about itself, and what are its claims.
In the Old Testament three things strike us. First, that in the opening chapters we are told of things completely outside the range of the observation of any human writer, things indeed clean outside any knowledge that could be possessed apart from a divine revelation, since happenings before man’s creation are recounted; and further, that these things are stated not in terms befitting human speculation but with the quiet ring and assurance of absolute knowledge, and therefore of truth.
Secondly, in all the historical books we find features utterly unknown in all human histories. We may specify such a feature as the complete absence of all hero worship. Men, indeed, there are, approved of God, but even so their failings are recounted, just as any commendable feature in the worst of men is mentioned; and all with a lofty detachment from human passions and prejudices, with an impartial and serene judgment which is found only in God Himself. Or, again, we notice that matters, that we never should have even mentioned, are dwelt upon at considerable length— such as the passages Judges 17-18:14-26, and 1 Sam. 1:4; 2:11— while things we should have thought worthy of much notice are ignored; for instance, the great earthquake in the reign of Uzziah is never mentioned historically, and we should have no knowledge that the great catastrophe happened were it not for two passing allusions in Amos and Zechariah. The historical books, in short, are only “history” in so far as its recital serves the purpose of illuminating the purposes or the ways of God.
Thirdly, in the prophets we cannot but feel the directness of their appeal. No hesitation, no apologies; but the most direct and emphatic “Thus saith the Lord” repeated again and again. The Word of God came through their lips and pens, and its powerful appeal to heart and conscience is perceptible today in the hostility their words still awaken in sinful men, as well as in the way of subduing men’s hearts with a view to their ultimate blessing.
When we reach the New Testament, we find plain endorsements of the inspiration and authority of the Old, first from the lips of our Lord Himself (Matt. 4:4, 7, and 10; Matt. 5:17; Mark 12:24; Mark 14:21; Luke 4:21; Luke 16:31; Luke 24:25, 27, 44-46; John 5:46, 47; John 10:35), and then from the Evangelists in their frequent references to the fulfillment of Old Testament scripture in the life and death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus. “That it might be fulfilled,” “That the scripture might be fulfilled,” are words that we read over and over again. In the epistles, too, we have inspiration clearly claimed for the Old Testament writers in such passages as 2 Timothy 3:15-17; 1 Peter 1:10-12, and 2 Peter 1:19-21.
What about the New Testament? is the question which may now be asked. In its pages the Old is clearly endorsed and treated as inspired of God, but does it claim or assume inspiration equally for itself? The answer is— Yes.
The New, be it remembered, has come to us from the pens of some of the apostles of our Lord and Saviour, and their co-laborers. In 1 Corinthians 2:13 we have the Apostle Paul claiming inspiration for verbal utterances of his own and of the other apostles when conveying the truths of divine revelation. In 1 Corinthians 14:37 he asserts that his writings are “the commandments of the Lord.” In 2 Peter 3:15-16 we have the Apostle Peter corroborating the epistles of Paul and putting them on a par with “the other scriptures.”
Further, in the introductory verses to his gospel, we have Luke claiming a “perfect understanding of all things from the very first,” and also that he wrote “in order” or “with method,” so that in result Theophilus might “know the certainty” of the things he had previously received. We have the Apostle John in his first epistle declaring that he wrote it so that believers might “know” that they had eternal life (Luke 5:13). Both these statements assume for the writings in question a certainty and authority which only inspiration can account for. In the Revelation we have the Apostle John receiving the revelation, bearing record of it, and in result producing “the words of this prophecy” (Rev. 1:1-3), and finally pronouncing a solemn curse on any who should dare to tamper with those “words” as originally given (Rev. 22:18-19). Here, again, inspiration— verbal inspiration— is assumed.
These scriptures are quite sufficient to show that the New Testament writers while asserting the inspiration of the Old assume it in equal measure for themselves; and that therefore while the Holy Scriptures, which Timothy knew from his childhood’s days— according to 2 Timothy 3:15— were the Old Testament writings, the “all scripture” of the next verse covers all those writings which we know as the Bible. “All scripture is given by inspiration of God,” or “is God-breathed.” A remarkable expression that! Just as in creation the finely wrought vessel of clay—for “the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground” —became a living entity only after God’s in-breathing—for He “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul” —so what would otherwise have been but a collection of literary fragments has by the fact of God’s in-breathing every part become one organic whole; living and powerful indeed, since it is the inspired Word of God.
1 Corinthians 2 is perhaps the most striking chapter bearing upon this subject, for here we are permitted to see the process that God has been pleased to ordain for the communication of His thoughts to His people. Here are three distinct steps and a distinct action of the Holy Spirit of God in connection with each.
The first step is that of Revelation. The things prepared of God for those that love Him, things unseen, unheard, and unimagined by man, have been made known by the Spirit of God, who is thoroughly competent for such work, as the end of verse 10 shows. Verse 11 goes further, and declares that the Spirit of God is the only possible source of such revelations.
Now these Spirit-given revelations reached, not the world, not even all saints, but the apostles and prophets (cf. Eph. 3:5), who are the “us” of verse 10; and having received them they proceeded to convey them to others. Hence the “we” of verse 13 indicates the “us” of verse 10.
The second step, then, is that of inspiration. God took care that the apostles and prophets should convey these revelations to others under supervision of a direct and divine kind. They were not left, so verse 13 teaches, to exercise their own wisdom as to the best way of stating the truth, but were guided by the Holy Spirit in the exact words they used.
Thirdly comes the step of appropriation. The truth having been revealed to men chosen of God, and by them communicated in inspired words, it must now be received or appropriated if it is to have an enlightening and controlling effect upon men. Of this verse 14 speaks. No natural man, i.e., man in his natural or unconverted condition, can possibly receive these things. He totally lacks the faculty that would enable him to receive them. Spiritual things are spiritually discerned. Believers have “the mind of Christ,” and have received the Spirit of God that they may “know the things that are freely given to us of God.”
When we speak then of revelation, we think of that work of the Spirit of God by which knowledge and thoughts which are purely divine are conveyed to the minds and hearts of men chosen of God.
When we speak of inspiration we refer to that second work of the Spirit of God by, which those men were enabled to set forth the revealed truth in words divinely chosen and therefore of divine fullness and precision, whether they spoke or whether they wrote them.
Revelation is concerned with the transference of truth from the mind of God to the minds of apostles and prophets, so that the conception and understanding of it might be theirs.
Inspiration is concerned with the transference of the same truth from the minds of the apostles and prophets to all the saints, and for this not merely thoughts but words were needed. But if human words are to be the proper expression of divine truth they must be chosen and used with perfect fitness and accuracy, and this was secured by the action of the Holy Ghost. “Holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost” (2 Peter 1:21).
The word translated “moved” in that passage means “carried” or “borne along.” These holy men of Old Testament times spake, as borne along by the Holy Spirit.
Take Jeremiah, for instance. It may be quite true that a certain tone and style marks his writings so that any man of literary discernment and familiar with the contents of the Bible may usually recognize them wherever quoted; still, the Spirit of God was the power that bore his mind along the flowing current of God’s will, and so controlled his writing that both thoughts and words were God’s.
Sometimes, indeed, this action of the Holy Spirit took so powerful a form as to overleap necessary limitations that existed in the mind of the prophet in question, and caused him to write things the real and full meaning of which he knew not: and so it came to pass that some, if not all, the writers of Old Testament scripture had to inquire and search diligently concerning the meaning of that which they themselves had written. The Spirit of Christ in them had been signifying in their writings matters concerning the sufferings of Christ and the glories, to follow. In answer to their search it was further revealed to them that they were writing for the benefit of saints in the future— the saints of the present dispensation. This being so, the full import of their inspired writings necessarily remained vague and indistinct to their own minds. There was full inspiration, but no full revelation save to future generations. 1 Peter 1:10-12 tells us about this, and proves how powerful and real a thing inspiration is.
With this may be contrasted the kind of inspiration alluded to by Paul in 1 Corinthians 14. In verse 19 he tells us that when giving inspired communications in the assemblies of the saints his object was to give words with his understanding, even if only five in number. He desired to speak of things which he intelligently apprehended in such a way that they were thoroughly intelligible to his listeners.
The kind of inspiration spoken of in 1 Peter 1:10-12 largely characterized the Old Testament writers, and inasmuch as the prophets, who in these cases were the vehicles of the messages, were uninstructed as to the full purport of their words, it may be described, for want of a better term, as unintelligent inspiration.
The kind of inspiration mentioned in 1 Corinthians 2 is that which almost entirely characterizes the New Testament writings, and may by contrast be termed intelligent inspiration. The possible exception to the rule, which leads us to insert the word “almost” in the above statement, and italicize it, is the case of some parts of the Revelation. It is quite likely that some of the visions and statements in that remarkable unveiling of the future were obscure to John the seer as they are to us, and that they will only stand out clear in their full and distinct meaning to saints of the coming tribulation period. The famous number 666 (Rev. 13:18) is the most pronounced example of what we mean.
The above distinction may be helpful to those who would study the question a little more closely. It must never be overlooked, however, that whether unintelligent or intelligent, the fact and degree of inspiration is in both cases exactly the same.
But let us now turn to some questions frequently raised in connection with this subject.
What is the exact meaning of verbal inspiration, now so often derided even by professed ministers of the gospel; and do you believe in it?
The exact meaning is: Inspiration of such fullness that it extends to the control of the very words of the utterance or writing. Verbal is an adjective derived from the Latin verbum— a word. There are those who will allow a modified inspiration, extending as far as the thoughts are concerned; an inspiration differing in degree but hardly in kind from that state of mental exaltation and rapture which produced the finest passages from Shakespeare, Milton, or Dante.
We have to observe, however, first, that Scripture definitely makes its inspiration a matter of its words (1 Cor. 2:13; Rev. 1:3, Rev. 22:18, 19), and, second, that an inspiration such as suggested extending only to the thoughts would be useless, as far as giving us authoritative Scriptures is concerned. To assure us that Paul and Peter and John had wonderful ideas given of God, but that they were left without any divine guidance when it came to be a question of expressing those ideas for the benefit of others, is to take away with the left hand what is offered by the right.
You and I have no means of getting at those wonderful thoughts in Paul’s mind save by the words in which he clothed them. The difficulty of putting the simplest and lowest thought into proper and adequate words is notorious, and without inspired words we have nothing inspired at all, whatever Paul may have had. To put it in another way: if we have not Scriptures verbally inspired we have no inspired Scriptures at all, and the Bible, though interesting and elevating, would not be authoritative. It is exactly this authority which the modern false teacher is out to destroy.
For ourselves it is enough that the Bible claims verbal inspiration for itself. We believe it.
What theory do you hold as to how verbal inspiration became effective; how did it work?
Quite a number of theories have been formed, but we hold none of them. We should no more think of forming a theory as to the exact working of inspiration than we should think of forming a theory as to other great mysteries of the faith, such as the truth of one God yet a Trinity of Persons, or the exact working of God’s creatorial power in bringing worlds into being, or the exact mode in which the incarnation of our blessed Lord and Saviour became an accomplished fact. Instead, we admit frankly and at once that here are these great truths clearly revealed in Scripture, yet wholly supernatural and beyond our understanding. We do not expect to understand them; we accept them in faith. We are not troubled by finding these mysteries totally beyond our comprehension, but rather confirmed. It is what we expect in a revelation which is divine. Did everything in Christianity fall within the compass of our minds—which, though renewed through grace, are still human—we should at once know it to be human in its origin. And this it is not; it is superhuman: it is of God.
What have you to say as to the continual accusations of inaccuracy and mistakes which are leveled at the Bible?
Just this: that if all the accusations ever brought could be collected together and classified we believe that a substantial majority would fall under the head of accusations founded upon sheer ignorance, intensified often by an admixture of cunning dishonesty. The favorite infidel question as to Cain’s wife is an example of this large class. Such difficulties exist not in the Scriptures but purely in the minds of the people who raise them.
Setting aside all these, we believe that of the residue, a great majority again would prove to be genuine difficulties, but of a sort that careful and prayerful research gradually resolve into most instructive helps, often displaying much hidden beauty.
An example of this class is the statement about the fourteen generations in Matthew 1:17. But we discover that the fourteen generations from David to the captivity is reached by omitting the names of the kings more immediately descended from the wicked Athaliah, the daughter of the yet more infamous Jezebel. Their names to the third generation are kept out of the genealogy. Thus the apparent error is found to be due to the fact that God’s thoughts and ways and reckonings are not ours. If apostasy supervenes He does not count the generations affected by it.
A very small number of difficulties now remain to form the third class, which is composed of little discrepancies, the source of which cannot be discovered with certainty. An example of this class is the question of the age of Ahaziah when he came to the throne of Judah. 2 Kings 8:26 states it as 22, while 2 Chronicles 22:2 says 42. The error evidently crept in through a very early mistake In copying, but when and how we have no means of knowing.
The fact is, then, that most of these so-called mistakes are apparent only and not real, and the very few real ones are copyists’ slips and the like on side matters of no vital importance.
Is it possible to maintain the inspiration of our Authorized version since a Revision has been issued as well as many other translations in English?
We do not maintain the inspiration of the Authorized or any other version and never have.
1. What we do maintain is as follows: That the Scriptures, as written in their original tongues, were given by inspiration of God, that inspiration extending to the words employed.
2. That by means of the large number of ancient manuscript copies of the Scriptures preserved to us in the Providence of God, we possess a very accurate knowledge of the Scriptures as originally written, the words or passages as to which any doubt exists being very few and unimportant.
3. That the Authorized translation is on the whole very good and faithful in its rendering of the inspired original, but that it may be usefully compared with the Revised Version, and more especially with the New Translation by the late Mr. J.N. Darby, to ensure even greater accuracy. Substantially, however, it gives us the inspired Word of God in trustworthy form.
What about the Revised Version of 2 Timothy 3:16— “Every Scripture inspired of God is also profitable” is— that correct?
Pretty clearly it is not correct. In the original Greek the verb “is” does not occur at all, being understood, but not expressed. In English we must express it, and the question is as to where it should be inserted. There are eight other passages of similar construction in the New Testament, and each of these has been translated by the Revisers as in the Authorized Version. Only in 2 Timothy 3:16 have they twisted the sentence round in this way. One of these eight Scriptures is Hebrews 4:13. If we translated that according to the Reviser’s rendering of our verse it would read: “All things that are naked are also opened unto the eyes of Him with whom we have to do,” which on the face of it would be absurd. Indeed, the Scripture in Timothy looks foolish as translated by the Revisers, inasmuch as they turn it into a statement of the perfectly self-evident truth that every God-breathed writing is good. That Timothy well knew; the assurance he needed in view of the apostles’ departure was that “all scripture is God-breathed.”
How do you account for the fact that the sayings of evil men have a place in the Bible; are these inspired?
By no means. It is easy, however, to account for them. The explanation lies in the difference between revelation and inspiration. Not all Scripture is direct revelation from God. Some of it is history in which the sayings of evil men and even of Satan are recorded. Again, a book like Ecclesiastes is largely the record of Solomon’s thoughts and reasonings and disillusionments while seeking happiness in the gratification of his natural desires. Yet all is given to us by inspiration of God. We have divinely accurate accounts of what was done or said; and Solomon is led to record his mental struggles with such divine fitness as to be profitable for our warning and correction.
If an illustration of this be needed, turn to Ecclesiastes 2:24: “There is nothing better for a man, than that he should eat and drink, and that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labor.” Is this a revelation from God? Is it God’s voice telling us that food and drink are, after all, the highest good? Emphatically No! What, then? It is the divinely inspired record of the extreme folly to which the wisest of men may be led if he have no light above his natural reason and observation!—and how good of God to give us a peep at this in His inspired record.
Some people like just to open the Bible and take the first verse their eye falls upon as a direct message from God to them. Is this a right procedure?
Hardly. We are quite willing to believe that there have been occasions when people have in that way lighted on remarkable verses that have come to them with much point, yet any such haphazard method practiced in a habitual way is unworthy of the inspired Word of God.
It is written not for the lazy, but for diligent searchers for truth and guidance like the Berean Jews (Acts 17), who read it in faith and dependence on God. Only thus do we, “rightly divide” (2 Tim. 2:15) its contents and obtain light and wisdom from God.
The copyright for this material is assigned to Scripture Truth Publications. Used by permission.
The Deity and Humanity of Christ
There is no greater question between the covers of the Book than that which the Lord Himself raised with the unbelieving men of His day — “What think ye of Christ?” (Mt. 22:42). In these five short words He set before them the pivotal point upon which everything turns. The deepest foundations of the faith lie here, and any error or fault in this matter is sure to make its influence felt throughout the whole building. As John Newton puts it: “‘What think ye of Christ?’ is the test to try both your state and your scheme; You cannot be right in the rest, unless you think rightly of Him.”
Our object is to show that the Scriptures present our Lord Jesus Christ as the true God who in grace beyond all comprehension became true Man for the vindication of God’s glory and our redemption. We will take the two parts of our subject separately, and begin by affirming the deity of Jesus.
First of all, turn to the Old Testament. It is a true saying that “Coming events cast their shadows before.” Little events cast little shadows; great events great shadows. Commencing with Genesis 3:15, references to the coming of One who should be a Deliverer abound. The Coming One is of such majestic importance that He casts a shadow which stretches over the complete four thousand or more years before His advent. We may well inquire who He is.
Let Isaiah 9:6 furnish us with an answer: “Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon His shoulder: and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.” Take careful notice of this remarkable prophecy. It does not speak of some passing manifestation of God as was the case when Jehovah appeared for a brief moment in human guise to Abraham as recorded in Genesis 18. “The mighty God” is the name of the Child who is to be born, the Son who is to be given, who is, as the next verse shows, to sit on David’s throne, and exercise government thence, producing an age of justice and consequent peace upon earth.
Further, Isaiah 9:6-7 are the climax of a prophecy which began in Isaiah 7, when Isaiah encountered Ahaz, King of Judah, and gave him a sign from the Lord. The sign was, “Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel” —Immanuel meaning “God with us,” as explained in Matthew 1:23.
Isaiah 8 makes further reference to the coming Immanuel, and His rejection is hinted at in verses 14 -18 of that chapter; and then in Isaiah 9 we discover that the virgin’s Son is to be born not for herself alone, but as God’s gift to the whole of Israel, the coming Deliverer and King, and His Name is given us in five-fold completeness.
Now, bear in mind that in Scripture a name is, generally speaking, descriptive of the one who owns it, and not a mere label without any such meaning as names often are with us today; and then ponder the meaning of “the Name” of the virgin’s Son in its fivefold character.
“Wonderful” — Something singular or unique, altogether surpassing ordinary human knowledge.
“Counselor” — One marked by wisdom, resource, and authority. He who is in the secret of the divine counsels and able to put them into effect.
“The mighty God” — The full title of Deity. The Hebrew word for God is in the singular El, not Elohim, which is plural. The virgin’s Son is singularly God, if one may so speak.
“The everlasting Father” or “Father of Eternity.” He from whom eternal ages spring and have their being.
“The Prince of Peace” — He who will ultimately end all the discords of earth under righteous rule.
We may sum up the whole passage by saying that there is only one word which adequately describes the real character and being of the virgin’s Son, and that word is God.
Turn now to Micah 5:2. Just as the prophecy of the virgin’s Son is recalled in Matthew 1, so this is quoted in Matthew 2, and both are there referred to Christ. Bethlehem was of small consequence in itself, insignificant amongst the thousands of Judah, yet was it to leap into undying fame. And wherefore? “Out of thee shall He come forth unto Me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.”
Here, notice, we have, not the Child born, the Son given “unto us,” i.e., Israel, but that One who should come forth “unto Me,” i.e., Jehovah, to be His Ruler in the midst of Israel. As “judge of Israel” he would be rejected as verse 1 intimates, for He was Jehovah’s “holy Child [or Servant] Jesus,” against whom “both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, were gathered together” (Acts 4:27). Yet this holy Servant was so infinitely great that His goings forth were from of old, from “the days of eternity” (marginal reading).
There can be no evading the force of this astounding statement. The Babe who lay in Bethlehem’s manger was He whose “goings forth” had been from the days of eternity. He had gone forth as the active Worker in creation, for by Him God made the worlds (cf. Heb. 1:2). He had gone forth, too, as the Angel of Jehovah’s presence in former days, but never in such fashion as when, becoming flesh by means of the virgin’s womb, He came forth unto Jehovah at Bethlehem. Again we must say that there is only one word that will adequately set forth the real character and being of the Babe of Bethlehem, and that word is God.
We pass to the New Testament, and in Romans 1:1-4 we read that “the gospel of God” is “concerning His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh.” It was the Son of God who became David’s seed by incarnation, and though He was rejected as Son of David yet He was declared “the Son of God with power... by the resurrection from the dead.” This is the way the gospel is introduced to us and it is worthy of close attention. That a Person in the Godhead, who cannot be described, became by incarnation the Son of God, is a false theory, given a fresh lease of life in our day. That the Son of God became by incarnation the Son of David is the truth presented in the gospel of God.
Then again in Romans 9:5 we read of Israel’s crowning glory, i.e., that of their race “as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed forever.” In these words we have the clearest possible corroboration of what we have just been seeing in the Old Testament. If, however, we wish for the fullest setting forth of the deity of Christ we shall find it in the first chapters of John, Colossians, and Hebrews. Let us take the first of these passages and analyze the first four verses.
In this brief passage six tremendous facts are stated as to “the Word.”
1. “In the beginning was the Word.” He did not begin to be in the beginning, but He was, i.e., He existed in the beginning. The Word has eternal existence.
2. “The Word was with God,” and if with then He must be distinguished as having a personality of His own. The Word has distinct personality.
3. “The Word was God.” Though distinct as to His Person yet none the less God. The Word has essential deity.
4. “The same was in the beginning with God.” He is not, therefore, merely a manifestation of the Deity in time. The Word has eternal personality.
5. “All things were made by Him; and without Him was not anything made that was made.” He was the active Creator and nothing originated apart from Him. The Word had creatorial originality.
6. “In Him was life.” Here we pass from “all things” which includes inanimate creation, to that which in its lower manifestations characterizes animate creation— to that profound mystery of life which in its very nature must remain unsolved to the creature. The Word has essential vitality.
And now does any lingering doubt remain as to who “the Word” is? Simply then continue reading the passage until verses 16 and 17 be reached. “And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us... full of grace and truth. John bare witness of Him... and of His fullness have all we received and grace for grace. For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.” The Word has assumed perfect humanity, and as such His name is Jesus Christ.
It is a fact quite worthy of note that each of the four passages we have already examined (Isa. 9, Mic. 5, Rom. 1, John 1), while emphasizing the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ quite clearly declares His true humanity.
Indeed, the humanity of the Lord Jesus would seem to lie so clearly upon the surface of the New Testament that any detailed proof of it should be quite superfluous. And yet the great adversary and corrupter of the faith has not failed to assault this truth, and from very early days in the Church’s history unto today there have been subtle theories afloat which, while extolling Him as Man, yet deny the fullness and perfection of His Manhood. This we say bearing in mind that man as created of God is made up of three constituent parts, “spirit and soul and body,” according to 1 Thessalonians 5:23.
The Lord Jesus clearly claimed each of these three for Himself. We find Him saying, “My spirit” (Luke 23:46), “My soul” (Mark 14:34), My body (Matt. 26:12).
The danger, however, is that some would assent to this, but proceed to whittle away the force of what they admit by claiming that these words on His lips did not mean just what they would have meant on ours; that His spirit, His soul, His body must be understood in some special sense, so that, for instance, His sacred body must not be thought of as a real human body, nor His spirit as a real human spirit. If this were true we should not have “the Man, Christ Jesus” in any real sense at all.
We are not, however, left to reason in this matter. Hebrews 2:16 and 17 plainly states that since He stooped not to take hold of angels but of the seed of Abraham, “in all things it behooved Him to be made like unto His brethren.” Note those three important words in all things. If in all things then in spirit and in soul and in body.
Hebrews 4:15 adds a further corroboration of this great fact in stating that as our High Priest He “was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.” Again we say, note the three important words in all points qualified in this instance by the further three words “yet without sin” or “apart from sin.”
This is a remarkable passage, worthy of deepest study. Verse 14 emphasizes the greatness of our High Priest both in His person as Son of God and in His position in the heavens. Verse 15 emphasizes His graciousness by the fact that he has practically experienced every temptation that besets His saints, always excepting those that are only temptations to us by reason of our fallen sinful natures. Some temptations address themselves to the spirit, others to the soul, others to the body; indeed, it is not difficult to discern that in the wilderness the devil addressed his three temptations in those three directions. In Luke 4:1-13 they are presented in the ascending order: body—soul—spirit; the fiercest tests are always those that address themselves to the highest part of man. The Lord Jesus being truly and fully Man, the test was complete. He fully graduated in the school of suffering, and hence can fully sympathize in all things apart from sin.
These two passages in Hebrews make it abundantly clear that the truth as to the place of our Lord Jesus Christ as our Mediator and Priest hangs upon the fact of His becoming Man in the full and proper sense of that word; hence the emphasis placed upon His manhood in 1 Timothy 2:5: “There is one God, and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus.” He is, indeed, that “Daysman” whom Job sighed for, who “might lay His hand upon us both” (cf. Job 9:32, 33). He knew that God is not a man as he was, and hence the imperative necessity of One great enough to lay His hand upon God, yet gracious enough to lay His hand upon such an one as Job.
The New Testament is the revelation of the Daysman of Job’s desire Jesus, who is both God and Man.
How do you explain such a statement as “My Father is greater than I” (John 14:28) and other similar statements which, it is claimed by some, show that the Lord Jesus was not really God?
Supposing we could not explain them at all, these statements, many of which occur in John’s gospel, would furnish a very slender basis for denying the great fact of His deity, so fully set forth in John 1:1-14, as we have already seen.
The explanation is, however, very simple. The Lord— Jesus was the sent One of the Father, “sanctified i.e., set— apart and sent into the world” John 10:36), and as such He became the Servant of the Father’s glory and of man’s blessing— the true Hebrew servant of Exodus 21:2-6. The incarnate Son, therefore, became subject to the Father, moving and acting in reference to Him instead of acting on His own initiative. Hence, to quote again from John’s gospel, “The Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He seeth the Father do” (John 5:19). All these and similar scriptures refer to the position which the Son took up in relation to the Father when He assumed manhood.
In the business world we sometimes see a father take his sons into an equal partnership and yet retain himself a controlling voice in matters of high policy and finance. The sons are on absolute equality with their father and far more active than he in executing the firm’s transactions, yet subordinated to his ripe judgment and wisdom. Let this illustration show how amongst men these two things may be present together in perfect consistency with each other.
We distinguish, therefore, between what the Lord Jesus was and is essentially— equal with God, and what He became relatively— subordinate to the Father’s will.
Another difficult passage is Mark 13:32, in which the Lord disclaims knowledge of the day and hour of His return. What is the force of that?
Very similar to what we have just been saying. We would add, however, this: that Scripture always attributes the purposes, counsels, plans of the Godhead; the fixing of times and seasons to the Father. Note particularly Acts 1:7: “The times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in His own power.” It equally attributes action, the execution of the purposes of the Godhead, whether in creation, redemption, or judgment, to the Son.
These are deep mysteries of which we know nothing apart from revelation and of which consequently we would speak with reserve and reverence. It is evident that in Mark 13:32 the Lord Jesus spoke in strict keeping with the whole tenor of Scripture. To Him alone belongs the glorious activity, the “coming in the clouds.” To the Father alone belongs the times and seasons, the fixing of the day and the hour.
Some people believe that the Lord Jesus limited Himself in knowledge in becoming man. They have what they call the “Kenosis” theory. How does that agree with Scripture?
Like most of the devil’s lies, it has the show of appealing to Scripture. The word “Kenosis” is taken from the Greek word used in Philippians 2:7, translated “made Himself of no reputation” in A.V., and “emptied Himself” in R.V., the latter being the more literal rendering. The passage tells us how our Lord Jesus— in the form of God and equal with God, without any “robbery” or “unlawful grasping” (as was the case when Adam aspired to be as God)— emptied Himself in becoming Man. That is, He divested Himself of all that made Him externally glorious till He was only known as the carpenter’s son. Thereby He took a place in which He could receive from God all that which otherwise He might have had or done in His own right and power, rather than by the Spirit of God.
It does not mean that He ceased to be what He was, or that He became ignorant and subject to the common opinions and delusions of His day, as is blasphemously asserted. The whole gospel record denies such an evil interpretation of this text. What did He say concerning Himself and His teachings? — “My record is true,” “My judgment is true,” “As my Father hath taught Me I speak,” “I speak that which I have seen with My Father,” “Ye seek to kill Me, a Man that hath told you the truth which I have heard of God,” “Which of you convinceth Me of sin?” All these quotations come from one chapter, John 8.
Unbelieving men hold theories which are quite inconsistent with the teachings of our Lord, therefore His words must be discredited. The discrediting process is more likely to succeed if His trustworthiness can be undermined under cover of rendering homage to His condescension, and also if the whole thing can be labeled with a “scientific” name which sounds very learned while conveying little or nothing to the plain person. Hence the “kenosis” theory.
A great deal has been said in current preaching and literature about “the Christ” and “the historic Jesus” as though they were hardly the same. Is there any Scriptural foundation for this?
Jesus is His personal name as a Man born in this world. Christ, meaning the Anointed One, is rather descriptive of an office He fills. But Jesus is the Christ (cf. Acts 17:3), and there is no other Christ but He. The talk to which you allude is just an instance of that “sleight of men and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive.” “The Christ” is turned by them into an empty ideal, and “the historic Jesus” is treated as One of the Christ order showing us how we too may become “Christs.” Thus they deny “Jesus Christ come in the flesh,” and prove themselves of that spirit of antichrist of which 1 John 4:3 speaks.
No one can really confess Him “come in flesh,” save those who believe in His Deity and His Manhood. He came in flesh, therefore He is Man. He— that Person— Jesus Christ, came in flesh. Therefore He is God. We mere men do not come in flesh. We are flesh.
Scripture plainly teaches us that our Lord was born of a virgin. Modern unbelieving theologians as plainly deny it, and treat it as a matter of quite minor importance. Is it after all a matter of vital concern?
It is vital in the last degree. Everything that touches the truthfulness of the Scriptures is vital, for if they are not reliable in one detail, can they be accepted as reliable in any?
It is vital, further, inasmuch as the foundations of the faith are connected with it. In 1 Corinthians 15:45-49 we have the Lord Jesus contrasted with Adam. “The first man is of the earth, earthy; the second Man is the Lord from heaven” (v. 47).
As a matter of mere enumeration Cain was the second man; from the point of view of this verse he was not: he was only Adam reproduced in the first generation. The people walking the earth today are but Adam reproduced in— let us suppose— the 150th generation. But— mark it well— the Lord Jesus was not Adam reproduced at all. He was the second Man. He was Man, indeed, for He was conceived by the virgin Mary. He was an altogether unique Man of another order, for He was conceived of the Holy Ghost.
Every other man inherits the Adamic nature; Jesus did not. Every other man comes into the world under the sorrowful entail (to use a legal word) of sin and death and condemnation, of which the latter part of Romans 5 speaks. In the case of our blessed Lord the entail was broken. He was not born according to the laws of human reproduction. He was not of the Adamic race, but Himself, the last Adam, the Head of a new race in virtue of death and resurrection.
All these great facts go by the board if the virgin birth be not true. It is vital indeed!
It is difficult to understand how the Lord Jesus can be God and Man at the same time. What theory do you hold to account for it?
We hold no theory at all. Rather we hold that all theories on this sacred matter should be rigidly eschewed.
The Lord’s own words were, “No man knoweth the Son but the Father” (Matt. 11:27), and that being so it shows that there are depths of mystery about Him which the creature, however favored and exalted, can never fathom.
There are unfathomable mysteries in creation. Is it then to be wondered at that, when He who was Creator deigned to enter the ranks of creation by becoming Man, there are mysteries connected with the manner of His doing it which forever transcend the creature mind?
The truth as to the absolute and essential deity of the Lord Jesus is abundantly stated in Scripture, as also is the truth of the reality, fullness, and perfection of His Manhood. To start theorizing as to how these things can be is but the natural impertinence of the human mind. We rather take the place of believing what is revealed, bowing our heads and worshipping.
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Creation, and The Fall of Man
The first chapter of Genesis furnishes us with the divine account of the origin of all visible created things; and consequently it touches upon matters of which science, so called, would fain have a monopoly. This chapter has, therefore, for long been scornfully assailed by unbelief.
This, however, need not disturb the mind of any true believer for one instant. The attacks leveled by unbelief are really a compliment to the truth which is being attacked; and they all find their basis in that strange mixture of a very small number of facts with a very large number of suppositions, guesses, deductions, and speculations, which does duty as “science” when the Bible is in question. If we start sifting until the small residuum of real, true facts appears facts, as much beyond dispute as that there is a sun in the heavens not one can be found, which is in any way inconsistent with the wonderful truth divinely communicated through Moses in Genesis 1.
Let us note a few salient features of this wonderful chapter.
The first verse gives us the great original creatorial act of God whereby the heaven and the earth came into existence, taking place for aught we know in epochs immeasurably remote. Verse 2 resumes the story at a much later stage, when the earth was in a condition far removed from the perfectness of God’s original work, apparently the fruit of some catastrophe the origin of which is not revealed. From this point God again begins to work and we read not only of God creating (Gen. 1:21, 27) but of His making (Gen. 1:7, 16, 25), and finally of His forming man (Gen. 2:7). The two latter words are used when it is a question not of producing something out of nothing but rather of fashioning in fresh forms of order and beauty the matter already in existence.
Between verses 1 and 2 of Genesis 1, therefore, is a gap of an extent quite unknown to us. If scientists demand millions of years or even thousands of millions for the geologic ages which have passed, as they suppose, so be it. There is room for them all between these two verses.
The chapter opens with God. The word used in the Hebrew is Elohim, a word, remarkably enough, of plural form. This is the more striking when we remember that the Hebrew has, besides a singular, a dual form for its nouns. Dual signifies two, plural therefore signifying three or more. Yet the verb “created” is in the singular! Why this apparent breach of grammar? Evidently in order that in the very introduction to our knowledge of God we may receive a hint of the truth afterward plainly revealed that He is a Trinity in Unity— three Persons yet one God. We have only to read verse 2 to discover mention of the Spirit of God, and later in the New Testament we find the active work of creation consistently attributed to the Lord Jesus, the Son. “His Son... by whom also He made the worlds” (Heb. 1:2). The first verse of the Bible, therefore, contains a denial of Unitarianism.
It also contains a denial of Pantheism— an idea of the ancients and of the heathen world, but more recently revived in Christendom as one of the buttresses of “New Theology.” The god of the Pantheist is simply the spirit or essence of Nature. He expresses himself in Nature, but is not to be known or even conceived of as outside of or apart from Nature. The Pantheist professes a god who is immanent in Nature but not transcendent above it. The God of verse 1 is clearly One outside of Nature and infinitely above it, seeing He made it, and therefore existed before it. From Him all that which we call Nature proceeds.
A nineteenth-century philosopher put it on record that he judged that at least five things must be assumed if we wished in any intelligible way to account for the universe. The five things he mentioned were: Time, Space, Matter, Force, and Motion. He did not say this because he had any respect for the Bible, and yet each of these five is mentioned in verses 1 and 2:
1. “In the beginning” — time;
2. “The heaven” — space;
3. “The earth” — matter;
4. “The Spirit of God” — force; and
5. “Moved” — motion.
Verse 2 opens the six days’ work. We commonly but incorrectly speak of them as the six days of creation. Exodus 20:11 says: “In six days the Lord made heaven and earth.” The main work of those days was the fashioning anew of the earth and solar system that there might be a suitable abode for the man He was about to create. Beginning with the production of light, we travel up through the ranks of visible things to man, in whom rule and dominion was vested. The order observed in the account— vegetation, then trees, then fishes, birds, cattle, and creeping things, etc.— is such that no exception can be taken to it.
The work of the fourth day has presented difficulties to many; partly because years ago, under mistaken scientific ideas, light (v. 3) without the sun (v. 16) was regarded as an impossibility; partly because men did not carefully note what verses 14 to 18 really do say, and do not say Sun and moon were created as given us in verse 1; they were only made as “two great lights” on the fourth day; and, further, they were so set in relation to the earth, or the earth to them, as the case may be, that they ruled over the day and over the night, dividing the light from the darkness.
Two other points there are which we must not omit to notice, both concerning creation in a general way. The first is that all that God made was good. Five times over is this said (in verses 10, 12, 18, 21, and 25) about matter, whether animate or inanimate. These are important statements in view of the fact that the ordered scene of creation was so soon invaded by evil. It proves that it was an invasion from without and not produced from within. All as it left God’s hand was perfect and undefiled. It is also important as giving the lie direct to that terrible deceit of Satan miscalled Christian Science, which is based upon the assertion that matter is evil of itself, essentially so; and that mind is good. The truth is that matter originally was good and mind also, but that when sin did enter it gained first a foothold in mind, i.e. Adam’s mind, as we shall see. Through mind, matter has been corrupted. It is “the mind of the flesh” which is “enmity against God” (Rom. 8:7)
The second point is that in this chapter, as soon as life is touched upon, life of such an order as involved reproduction of species, whether herb, tree, fish, fowl, creeping thing, or cattle, the immutable law which governs all such reproduction is laid down in the three words “after his kind.” Here we have our attention called to a fact which is continually verifying itself in a thousand ways. Breeding and selection may modify a species within certain limits, but nothing can alter the species.
The words “after his kind” occur in the first of Genesis no less than ten times. They are the statement, we repeat, of a great fact, and a denial of the much-vaunted theory of evolution. Against this let us mention that Darwin in his book, The Origin of Species, frequently uses such phrases as, “The laws... are for the most part unknown;” “The causes... are most obscure;” “So profound is our ignorance;” “As we have no facts to guide us speculation.... is almost useless;” “No explanation can be given of these facts.” Indeed we have seen it stated that over eight hundred times he uses the phrase “We may well suppose...” What a contrast to the “Thus saith the Lord” of the Bible!
The creation of man, male and female, was the crowning work of the six days. Man was made after God’s likeness, i.e., bearing a moral resemblance to Him, possessing intelligence, reason, will, and sinless because innocent. He was also made in God’s image, i.e., as His representative in this lower creation, and consequently he was given dominion over it. Man was made to rule, but as God’s vice-regent, and therefore in dependence upon and obedience to Him. In this respect man appears to be alone, for even angels were made to serve, not to rule. “Are they not all ministering [or serving] spirits?” (Heb. 1:14).
In Genesis 2:7, man’s creation is again mentioned, but with another purpose in view. Here we are let into the secret of his spiritual constitution as distinguished from his bodily frame. The latter was constructed from the dust of the ground, but the former he inherited direct from God Himself by his in-breathing. Man is a living soul just as other forms of animate creation are said to be, but man is such by divine in-breathing of life, which the beasts are not, and herein lies his distinctive glory.
Next we are told of the garden planted by the divine hand and of Adam being put therein with the happy occupation of dressing and keeping it, for he was not to be idle even in innocence; and, further, that he was put under the single prohibition of not eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Chapter 2 closes with an account of how Eve was made. She was the subject of a special subsequent work of God, yet she was made out of Adam. The human race is therefore essentially one.
As we close Genesis 2 we have Adam the divine representative holding dominion over the earthly creation and Eve his helpmeet associated with him. Yet he was under law, a law of but one commandment, and therefore he stood before God on the ground of his own responsibility. Obedient, he abode in divine favor and maintained his position. If disobedient he was surely to die.
Genesis 3 brings us into the presence of the great catastrophe. The source of it is uncovered the serpent; but in the serpent we discern the devil who is called Satan, for he had evidently entered into the serpent, then a far finer creature than now, to carry out his evil design. The woman, Eve, becomes the medium of it. Approached by the serpent, she listened, and then taking the lead, which was not her place, she acted and disobeyed. Adam, however, was the responsible transgressor. It is always Adam’s sin of which Scripture speaks, and 1 Timothy 2:14 supplies us with the reason. Eve was deceived but Adam was not. His eating of the forbidden tree was therefore an act of pure defiance of God. It was undiluted lawlessness, and that is the very essence of sin.
We must carefully notice the way that the serpent went to work. It will not only instruct but also forewarn us, for his wiles are always similar. He aimed to undermine the creature’s confidence in the Creator, laboring first and foremost to produce distrust of God.
He took three steps to accomplish this.
The first was the questioning of divine revelation. “Yea, hath God said?” were his words. He knew that if once the word of God were weakened in the woman’s mind a breach would be made in the walls of defense. Notice that he misquoted the words in order to question it, “Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?” The woman corrected his misquotation but herself exaggerated the divine prohibition, adding the words, “neither shall ye touch it,” to what God had said. This proved that the poison of doubt had begun to work in her mind.
Following up this initial advantage the serpent said, “Ye shall not surely die,” thus denying the threatened penalty of ruin and death and giving the lie direct to God. He represented God’s judgment as being but an idle threat.
Thus far the serpent had dealt in negatives, but now he comes to a positive assertion and dangles before the woman’s mind a tempting bait. “Ye shall be as gods,” were the words by which he asserted deity for man as the result of disobedience, and he insinuated that God knew that this would be the result of their eating of the forbidden tree, and that the real reason why the prohibition was given was that He desired to withhold from them this coveted prize from motives of jealousy.
Even the devil, however, does not trade in nothing but lies. He added the words, “knowing good and evil” (v. 5), which was true as far as it went. He did not add that they would only know both in finding themselves under the power of the evil and without desire for the good. Facts partially stated often do efficient service in an evil cause.
These same three things are much in evidence in the false religious systems of today. However varied they may appear if subjected to only a surface inspection, a deeper analysis reveals that underneath they all agree in.
Questioning revelation, i.e., the Word of God.
Denying ruin and death.
Asserting deity for man.
Putting the three together we have “the lie” to which probably reference is made in 2 Thessalonians 2:11.
The lie did its deadly work in the soul of Eve. She believed the devil and distrusted God, hence the temptation of the forbidden fruit assailed her in all its force. It appealed to the lust of the flesh in her, for she saw that it “was good for food.” It appealed to the lust of the eyes for “it was pleasant to the eyes.” It appealed to the pride of life, for it was “a tree to be desired to make one wise.” Under this threefold appeal “she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.”
Thus God was abandoned for a moment of self-pleasing. The seed was sown which was to bear so fearful a harvest. The deed was done.
Its consequences began to appear immediately. Self-consciousness, slavish fear of God, the disposition to prevaricate and even to blame God Himself for what had happened, are all manifest in this third chapter. Nor do we have to go outside this chapter to find the governmental consequences of disobedience as regards the serpent, the woman, and the man. Each receives an appropriate sentence under which they are to this day and which no art nor ingenuity of man can lift. The garden of delights is lost forever.
One other thing in the chapter we must not forget. It contains those first words of hope as to the coming of the woman’s seed who should reverse the issues of that fatal day. Instantly the dark night of disaster fell the first star of hope was lit by the divine hand in man’s sky. The whole of Scripture, particularly the New Testament, is the working out in detail of all that was involved in Genesis 3:15.
A few questions may now be considered.
Difficulties arise in many minds as to the origin of evil and why God should permit it at all. Is there scriptural light as to this?
There is ample light as to the origin and entrance of evil into this world, and with that we have been dealing. Scripture also indicates that it was through pride that sin found a place originally with the devil (1 Tim. 3:6), and under the title “King of Tyre” we appear to get a description of Satan’s original glory and irremediable fall in Ezek. 28:11-19. But as to why God, knowing all that would ultimately be involved, ever created Satan or man, and why He permitted evil to ever invade any part of His fair creation, Scripture is silent, and we know nothing.
After all, these are matters which lie beyond the reach of finite minds. Is it likely that God would reveal to us such secrets of His high and eternal counsels as must lie on the plane of infinity? If He did, should we be any the wiser? No! It is well for us to call a halt here and say with the Psalmist, “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me: it is high, I cannot attain unto it” (Psa. 139:6).
We are often reminded of the vast ages which must have transpired, according to the geologists, during which various strata of the earth’s surface and fossil remains were deposited. Why does not the Bible tell us about these?
Because the Bible addresses itself not to the mind and its curious reasonings, but to the conscience and its awakened necessities; it is not an introductory handbook to the sciences, but a divinely given guide to God, and righteousness, and heaven. Hence no space is wasted over matters of no importance to its purpose.
Immense ages may have transpired as the geologists assert. If so, there is room for them all between verses 1 and 2 of Genesis 1, as we have seen. There is nothing in Scripture to deny the possibility of the earth being filled with vegetation and creatures, or even successive relays of them, in pre-Adamic times. The fossils unearthed may well be relics of these prior creatures.
What about the remains of prehistoric man, for which great antiquity is claimed? Are we to suppose that man existed before Adam, or that far more than six thousand years have elapsed since his appearance?
To suppose that man existed before Adam would clearly be to deny Scripture. He is “the first man” (1 Cor. 15:45). As to six thousand years; we speak of ourselves being separated from Adam by about that time, accepting Usher’s chronology as usually printed in our authorized English Bibles. There is, however, no certainty about that. It is a question of calculations made from the ages of the patriarchs and other historical data. Many have done it and no two agree. A few make it a little less than Usher and some a great deal more. Here, again, touching a matter of no real moment, the Bible is largely silent. We may make our calculations, but the fact is— we do not know.
If, however, folk come to you and talk about the proved great antiquity of human remains, tell them politely that in so talking they prove nothing but their own excessive credulity. If you wish to discover what a confused welter of contradictory assertions and suppositions the whole matter is involved in, read Evolution Criticized, by the late T.B. Bishop, if you can obtain it.
Are the six days of Genesis 1 ordinary days of twenty-four hours, or do you regard them as long periods of time?
The word “day” is not infrequently used in Scripture as signifying quite lengthy periods, hence we are not surprised that many have assigned that meaning to it in Genesis 1. Such an interpretation, however, lands us at once into serious difficulties.
For instance:
Why the repetition of “the evening and the morning” (vv. 5, 8, 13, 19, 23, 31). All plain enough if an ordinary day be meant— the Jewish day began at 6 p.m. remember. On the larger scale it would simply assert that there was a beginning and an ending to the period; a self-obvious fact unworthy of mention and much less of repetition.
Again, man was made during the sixth day, and then came the seventh of rest, between his creation and the Fall. Was this a period running into thousands of years? How could it be? Adam was only one hundred and thirty years old when Seth was born, and his total years were nine hundred and thirty.
Once more, in Exodus 20:8-11, we have the fourth commandment concerning the Sabbath wherein we have the seven days of the week and the seven days of creation put together without one word of differentiation between the respective days. We could only assert that one set of days was entirely different from the other if clear proof were forthcoming from other parts of Scripture, and it is not.
We therefore accept the days as being days of twenty-four hours. To faith this is no more difficult of acceptance than the interpretation which sees in them thousands of years.
Objections are raised as to God placing a prohibition upon Adam, and also as to the fact that such tremendous consequences are attributed to a cause so small as eating “an apple.” How would you answer such points?
Well, supposing God had left Adam without prohibition or commandment of any kind, there then would have been no sign or reminder of their relative positions; that God was Creator and to be obeyed, and that Adam was but the creature and bound to obey. The wonder is not that God put upon him one prohibition, but that He did not put many. There were many trees in the garden, and instead of withholding the ninety-nine and giving him but one, God gave him the ninety-nine and withheld but one.
As to great results flowing from an apparently small cause, is it not often thus? The first great world war sprang out of a fatal shot fired in an obscure Balkan town. The heavy express train runs through the junction and swerves from one main line to another. You do not expect it to hurl itself with a crash from the one to the other at a distance of a hundred yards. No, it slips off almost imperceptibly, and there is hardly an eighth of an inch in it at the point where the divergence takes place.
So Adam slipped off the main line of obedience over what may seem a very fine point. Nevertheless he defied God, and defiance is never more flagrant and willful than when it is in regard to some small thing, where the action is quite needless and without excuse.
Is the doctrine of “original sin” a scriptural one?
The term “original sin” may not be found in the Bible, but the truth which is conveyed by the term is there right enough. In Genesis 5:3 we read, “Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, after his image.” Note the words we have italicized. Originally he had been created in God’s likeness, but he did not reproduce himself during his brief time of innocence when there might have been another man also in God’s likeness. He fell first and then begat children in his own likeness as a fallen creature. The law of Genesis 1 “after his kind” at once operated. Hence in Romans 5:19 we read that “by one man’s disobedience many were made [or, constituted] sinners.” All his descendants came into the world sinners in their very constitution. That is what is meant by “original sin.”
The solemn truth that human nature is tainted and corrupt is not popular, but even if men could erase it from Scripture it would still be shouted to heaven from every corner of the habitable earth. There the fact is. The Bible alone explains its origin and unfolds the remedy.
The penalty was, “In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” Yet Adam lived for nine hundred and thirty years? How do you reconcile that?
First by understanding what death is. It is not extinction of being. No reconciliation would be possible if that were the case. Death is separation: primarily from God Himself the source of all life and happiness; secondarily the dissolution of man’s composite estate, the separation of spirit and soul from the body.
In the day that he sinned Adam died in the primary sense, that is, an infinite gulf yawned between him and God as the account shows. He became, in New Testament language, “dead in trespasses and sins” (Eph. 2:1).
Nine hundred and thirty-years later he yielded up the ghost and died in the secondary sense. Ultimately he will (except he repented and believed) be judged and consigned to the lake of fire, which means eternal and irrevocable separation from God. This is “the second death” chronologically, though it is the full thing and therefore the primary thing as regards its meaning.
But, second, note that death did fall in the garden on the very day of Adam’s sin. Not on him personally but on some innocent victim, or victims, out of whose skins the Lord God made clothing for the guilty pair. Thus early was testimony given in a typical way to the fact of death as the wages of sin and also to the efficacy of a substitutionary sacrifice.
Why did God make such a point of removing Adam from the tree of life, lest by any possibility he should eat of it?
Because, as it says, he would then have lived forever. That is, death could not then have touched his body and he would have been doomed to continue forever in his sinful condition; physically beyond the touch of death’s hand, but spiritually dead and alienated from God. His exclusion from the tree of life looked like further judgment, and so it was, but it also contained within itself the seeds of ultimate blessing, inasmuch as in God’s own time death was to become the door to eternal life. If physical death had been impossible to man then not even incarnation would have made it possible for Christ to die, and consequently Adam would have been shut up to his ruined state without hope. Thus early was God’s judgment made to subserve the designs of His mercy, and pave the way for that climax of the ages the death of Christ.
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Atonement: Its Meaning and True Character
The atoning character of the death of Christ is of transcendent importance.
No truth contained in Holy Scripture has suffered more from those who handle the Word of God deceitfully. We shall do well, therefore, to devote a chapter to it.
The word atonement is found only in the Old Testament. Its one occurrence in the New is a mistranslation. We refer to Romans 5:11, where the margin of a reference Bible shows reconciliation as the alternative reading, and this latter is, without any question, the right translation.
In the Old Testament it is frequently used, and it is an interesting and significant fact that the Hebrew word for it— kaphar— is one which has as its root meaning “to cover.” This at once links it on with the whole burden of Scripture testimony that sinful man is exposed by his guilt to wrath and condemnation, and therefore needs that which will cover him in the sight of a holy God. The significance of this will, however, become plainer as we proceed.
Directly Adam fell and sin came into the world it became manifest that a guilty sinner needs covering. The sewing of the fig-leaf aprons and the hiding behind the trees of the garden proclaimed it as being the instinctive feeling of the guilty pair. Even more loudly did God’s own action proclaim it when He made “coats of skins and clothed them” (Gen. 3:21). Skins, notice, which meant that death fell upon some animals that the sinful pair might be covered. Abel’s faith seized this first revelation of the divine way of covering a sinner, and hence in chapter 4 we read of his offering a firstling of his flock when drawing near to God. Covered by the death of that offering, “he obtained witness that he was righteous” (Heb. 11:4).
Traveling down the course of time we reach the flood; and here again the need of a covering when God’s judgment is poured forth was very evident. In the ark Noah and his family were covered. Gopher wood was all around them, and not a crack was left, for the instructions were to “pitch it within and without with pitch” (Gen. 6:14). Significantly enough the very word used in the Hebrew for “pitch” is one closely related to the word for “covering” or “atonement.” The covering in Noah’s case was complete. Yet even so he did not recommence his career on the cleansed earth apart from sacrifices of blood— (see Gen. 8:20).
Subsequent to Noah the patriarchal age was reached, and we find these men building their altars to the Lord and offering sacrifices as the basis of their relationship with Him. Judging by the record in Genesis it appears, however, that as time went on the energy of their faith declined and such sacrifices became less and less frequent. Abraham was far more active in this matter than any of the others. They had no definite command from God as to it, but they evidently acted in the light of Noah’s great sacrifice of the seventh of the clean beasts and clean fowls— those odd ones over and above the three couples— provided for in the divine instructions.
Still following the course of time, we reach the era of Israel’s servitude in Egypt, and during this period of eclipse we have no record of any sacrifices at all. Directly, however, the Lord commissioned Moses to deliver them the word was, “Let us go... that we may sacrifice to the Lord our God” (Ex. 3:18), and this led up to the sacrifice which stands out preeminently in the Old Testament— that of the lamb on the original Passover night as recorded in Exodus 12. Here again, clearly, the firstborn of Israel were covered when the stroke of judgment fell upon the firstborn of Egypt.
From this point the divine scheme of atonement by blood came fully into the light— as fully, that is, as it is found in Old Testament scripture. Brought out of Egypt and in the wilderness the law was given to Israel, and sacrifices of blood were the chief cornerstone of the whole legal system then instituted. As the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews puts it, “Almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission” (Heb. 9:22).
The use of the word almost in the verse just quoted would lead us to expect a few exceptions to the general rule. One such exception was found in the law concerning the taking of a census in Israel, as given to us in Exodus 30:11-16. Here, instead of the shedding of blood, the offering by every man of a small silver coin was commanded. Read this passage carefully for it affords very helpful evidence as to the true meaning of atonement.
If a man was to be numbered amongst the children of Israel, and in that way be acknowledged by God as one of His people, he could only be so on the ground of there having been made an atonement for his soul— that is, as a sinner his soul must be covered ere it came under the divine eye. The half-shekel of silver was the coin appointed as the “atonement money.” Rich and poor alike had to offer it, for all alike were sinners with no difference between them, and it was not a question of the intrinsic value of the coin.
Had that been the point then incalculable wealth would not have been sufficient, and Moses would have had to ask with Micah, “Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil?” The small silver coin was just a token and nothing more.
But, a token of what? A token representing the animals that otherwise had died in their stead, and therefore a token of the fact that every man of Israel was a man of forfeited life, and consequently he must be ransomed, that is, bought back from the servitude to sin into which he had fallen, before he could be numbered.
But perhaps these two points need a little amplification. Turn, then, to 1 Peter 1:18: “Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold...” — the inference being that their fathers had been so redeemed. But when had they been? The answer evidently is— their redemption was always purchased thus. If a pious Israelite desired to be right with his God then must he always be expending silver and gold in the purchase of sacrificial animals which brought him by death that measure of redemption which he knew. Now at the census time God did not require, as we might have surmised, the death of sacrificial animals on an immense and national scale. Rather He cut down His requirements to a minimum, if we may so say, and only demanded this small silver coin from each man as a token that sacrifice was needful.
But the atonement itself: what was the nature and character thereof? This, too, is made very clear in the law of the census. The half-shekel which each was to give is called “the atonement money.” Its object is twice stated in the words “to make an atonement for your souls,” and once it is put in these words: “Then shall they give every man a ransom for his soul unto the Lord.”
Pay attention to this. False theories of atonement abound, and every one of them aims at emptying the word of its proper meaning and filling it with a meaning more pleasing to the tastes of fallen human nature, but foreign to Scripture.
Our passage gives us clearly its Scriptural meaning and usage. That which makes atonement, or covering, for the soul is that which ransoms the soul. But why this necessity of ransom? Because the soul is forfeit owing to sin. And what is the nature of the forfeit which lies upon the soul because of sin? The extreme forfeit of death. That which ransoms the soul, by lifting the forfeit that lies upon it, is therefore the only thing that makes atonement.
And what will lift the forfeit of death? This is the supreme question. The death sentence stands alone in its gravity and weight. We have never heard of the death sentence having any alternative equivalent. There is no alternative to it in the eyes of law, because it has no equivalent. Nothing but death can meet the death sentence. In other words, nothing but the yielding up of life can meet the case of the one whose life is forfeit. The shedding or pouring out of the lifeblood is the pledge and guarantee of life being yielded up. Hence the fact that the doctrine of the blood runs like a scarlet thread through Scripture until it reaches its climax in the cross as recorded in John 19:34. Here we reach historically “the precious blood of Christ.”
The meaning of atonement and its true character were thus developed in Old Testament scripture; and yet when we turn to such a New Testament scripture as Hebrews 10:1-3 we are fully assured that there was no intrinsic value in any of the offerings of which the Old Testament speaks, for at best they were but types, shadows of the antitype, the substance. They had a value just as any promissory note payable so many months after date, or other form of paper currency has value, in view of its being ultimately realizable in hard cash. The actual worth of that promissory note for £1,000 viewed as a piece of paper with ink traced upon it may be well under one penny. Its potential value at due date is exactly £1,000. So with the sacrifices of old: their intrinsic value was trifling, and their value lay in their being pledges of the coming of that great sacrifice of the ages which was accomplished at the cross.
The atoning death of our Lord Jesus Christ lies right at the heart of everything. Its value is as infinite and incalculable as is the glory of His essential deity. The preciousness of His blood can only be estimated by the dignity and purity of Him who shed it. We were tainted by sin, and being defiled beyond remedy had forfeited our lives. He was God, and having become Man, proved Himself even as Man to be holy, harmless, undefiled, One upon whom death had no claim. And then He of the unforfeited life, He who both as God and as Man had every title to live, being Himself the very Fount and Origin of life, laid down that life for us of the forfeited lives. Here is the miracle of miracles indeed!
“And oh! what heavenly wonders dwell
In the atoning blood.
By this are sinners saved from hell,
And rebels brought to God.”
Two other observations we would make. The first is: how poor and paltry are all those false theories as to atonement when compared with the truth as we have it in Scripture. What sublime heights of divine love are seen in the cross of Christ! How supreme and conclusive the vindication and display of God’s righteousness there!
Proud men, who have no wish to own themselves under the forfeit of death, may ridicule God’s Word and denounce atonement by vicarious suffering and death as wrong, but they have nothing to put in its place that does not violently infringe all that is righteous and holy and true. They remain satisfied with their own schemes only because they obstinately close their eyes to the true facts of the situation. Once admit the facts of man’s utter ruin and God’s essential righteousness and truth, and no solution is possible but that of the vicarious sufferings, the atoning death, of Christ. In His cross, and there alone, every divine attribute was harmonized as regards its dealings with sin. All was brought to balance and rest. There it was that “Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other” (Psa. 85:10). And because these seemingly opposite attributes of God have met harmoniously in the cross, they meet with equal harmony in the experience of the ransomed sinner, and will yet meet harmoniously in a redeemed earth in the millennial age.
Lastly we would say, remember that the word atonement does not exhaust the meaning and fullness of Christ’s death. It is, as we have said, an Old Testament word. When we come to the New Testament we find a great expansion of this fundamental truth. Indeed, we must remember in regard to every divine reality or fact that no one word, or one side of the matter, fully sets it forth. Divine things are too big to be grasped in one embrace by finite minds.
“Vicarious atonement” is a phrase often used, and to it many modem theologians raise great objection. Just what is the meaning of it?
A “vicar” is a substitute or representative—the Pope claims to be Christ’s vicar on earth, for instance— and hence the adjective vicarious simply means substitutionary. By vicarious atonement we simply mean an atonement wrought by One who stands in the room and stead of those for whom He suffers. Their sins are expiated in His blood.
Those who object to vicarious atonement generally prefer to treat the word as if it were at-one-ment. Is there any real basis for this alteration?
None whatever. In the first place the meaning of a word is to be decided not by its derivation but by its use; and the use of the word in Scripture is with the meaning of making satisfaction for sin by enduring the penalty, and therefore expiating, and not with the meaning of reconciling. For instance, the word prevent, according to its derivation, would mean to come before or anticipate. When the Authorized Version was made in 1604 A.D., its use agreed with its derivation, and hence the translators inserted it in Matthew 17:25 and 1 Thessalonians 4:15. Today it is never used in its derived sense but always as meaning to hinder. If we always insist on taking words according to their derivation we shall have some strange misunderstandings before we are done!
Secondly, there is the fact, to which we have before alluded, that the word atonement is the translation of the Hebrew word, kaphar, which means “to cover.” The translators of the Bible nearly always chose atonement as their rendering of the word, just a few times using other words such as reconcile, pacify, purge, etc. The using of the word at-one-ment every time would not have altered the fact that God originally spoke of covering what was sinful by sacrifice, and that that is His meaning. The worst of it is that the men who mislead, by thus juggling with the spelling of atonement, are not usually men who are in ignorance of these simple facts.
Can you explain at all why the word “atonement” does not occur in the New Testament?
The only suggestion we have to offer is that the Old Testament deals with truth in a general fashion with more or less shadowy outline, whilst in the New we have it in far more clearly defined shape and fullness of detail. Atonement is a word which gives us the truth of the gospel in its general outline. The New Testament furnishes us with propitiation, justification, and other terms which give us the truth with greater precision, and it is therefore simply full of what atonement signifies, though the actual word does not occur.
Nothing has been said as to the perfect life of our Lord. What part did that play in the work of atonement?
No part at all, save in an indirect way. He “bare our sins in His own body on the tree” (1 Peter 2:24). Atonement was made on the tree and there alone.
Again we read: “The Son of Man came ... to give His life a ransom for many” (Matt. 20:28). “His life,” someone may exclaim, “see it says ‘His life a ransom for many.’” True but that is not all it says. He “came... to give His life.” It was the giving of His life— the yielding of it up in death— that affected the ransom. The perfection and spotlessness of His life made the offering up of it so acceptable to God, and thus was one of His great qualifications for the sacrificial work. He was indeed the Lamb “without blemish.”
It has been commonly taught that the death of Christ puts away our evil, but that His life of perfect law-keeping is reckoned to our account and forms the positive righteousness in which we stand. Is this doctrine of “the imputed righteousness of Christ” scriptural?
It is not. The very term “righteousness of Christ” is not found in Scripture. “Righteousness of God” we do read of, and also that righteousness is imputed to the believer in Christ dead and risen, just as it was imputed to Abraham of old (see Rom. 4).
Do we cast, then, any doubt on the righteous life of our Lord? Nay, on the contrary we affirm that His obedience and devotedness as set forth in that matchless passage in Philippians 2 far exceeded any righteousness demanded by the Law of Moses. But we also affirm that the teaching of Scripture as to the believer’s relations with the law is not that Christ kept the law for us, but that He “redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us” (Gal. 3:13), and in so doing He redeemed us from “under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons” (Gal. 4:5)
We had broken the law, and Christ bore its curse for us that we might never bear it. But to say He kept the law for us— which would lead to our saying He did so, that we might never keep it!!— that emphatically is not scriptural. The truth is that we are redeemed from the law itself as much as from its curse, and as now sons of God we have Christ Himself as our rule and standard and not the law.
Nor is it the teaching of Scripture that a certain amount of Christ’s law-keeping is credited to us before God, but that cleared by Christ’s atoning death we now are before God in the life and standing and favor of the risen Saviour. We are “in Christ Jesus” “accepted in the Beloved” a vastly higher thing.
The only passage that might seem to support the idea of Christ’s imputed righteousness is Romans 5:12-19. But here the whole contrast lies between Adam’s one act of sin and disobedience and Christ’s one act of righteousness and obedience clearly His death, though we would not exclude from our thoughts His whole career of righteousness and obedience which culminated in His death.
A very important question is this: Does Scripture make known to us any atonement apart from blood?
A very important question indeed, and the answer is none whatever.
We would even go one step further and say that Scripture knows of no atonement apart from shed blood.
Deut. 12:23 tells us that “the blood is the life.” Leviticus 17:11 says “the life of the flesh is in the blood.” These two passages make quite clear what the meaning of blood is according to Scripture, and the latter verse ends with the words: “It is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul.”
As we have already seen, an exceptional case such as Exodus 30 can be found where silver did duty as representing the sacrifices that could be purchased with it, but when we come to the great atoning work of Christ, of which all Old Testament atonement was but a type, it is “not... with corruptible things, as silver and gold... but with the precious blood of Christ as of a lamb without blemish and without spot” (1 Peter 1:18, 19).
No atonement, then, apart from the blood of Christ and apart from that blood shed, for the verse already quoted in Leviticus says, as to the blood, “I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls.” The blood in the veins of the animal destined for sacrifice accomplished nothing. It was its life, truly, but only as given upon the altar, i.e., as shed sacrificially, did it make atonement and that only in type. All hinges on the death of Christ. Not life merely, but life yielded up, atones.
There is undoubtedly great objection in the minds of many to the doctrine of the Blood. Can you explain why?
The explanation is not far to seek; it lies in their refusal to admit that man is a creature of forfeited life.
They will admit readily enough that man is not what he ought to be. They view him as a victim of misfortunes and cursed with an unpleasant environment; but with a life that is ever struggling upward and thereby evolving itself into finer and yet finer planes of existence.
God’s word, on the contrary, reveals him as originally perfect yet speedily corrupted by sin, and that corruption so deep-seated and irremediable that the forfeit of his life becomes a necessity.
Believers in the innate goodness of man naturally reject the truth of atonement by the Blood of Christ. Those who know their own lost and ruined state gladly receive it as their only hope. There is no Unitarianism in the Bible.
The copyright for this material is assigned to Scripture Truth Publications. Used by permission.
Propitiation and Substitution
The Old Testament abounds with types of the sacrifice of Christ, but not until we come to the doctrines of the gospel as set forth in the Epistle to the Romans do we meet with the first of the two words that stand at the head of this chapter. The words themselves express the two great aspects of His atoning death.
First, let us recall that all sin is against God. It affects Him and not only us who are sinners. Truly, it ruins us and brings us under the power of death and judgment; but it is also an outrage upon His holy nature, a flouting of His authority, an attempt to dishonor Him in the sight of His creatures. Hence the sacrifice of atoning virtue must not only be such as shall relieve the sinner by removing his sin, but shall also, and first, meet all the demands of God’s holy nature, and of His righteous throne, and so thoroughly vindicate Him.
This is clearly recognized as a righteous principle amongst men. If an offense arises between two parties both are affected, and the first consideration must be for the offended party. Take the matter of debt, for instance. The debtor, if a right-minded man, is oppressed. He acknowledges the debt but cannot pay it and is miserable. We are sorry and anxious to relieve him, but we must not expend all our pity upon him. What about the creditor? He perhaps is not a man of wealth and cannot afford to lose what is rightly his, and hence he is oppressed as much, if not more, than the debtor.
How can the situation be relieved? Only by the intervention of a third party in such a way that the creditor’s claims are properly met. The deliverance of the debtor follows as a matter of course. There can be no question as to the relative order: it is, first the creditor’s claims, second the debtor’s necessities.
All this is quite simple, yet when we turn to the work of Christ, with which we as sinners are so vitally concerned, how easy for us practically to forget God’s side of the question in occupation with our own. Let us observe the way in which the death of the Lord Jesus is presented in Romans 3 and 4 as an antidote against this.
The first two and a half chapters of that Epistle reveal the total bankruptcy of mankind, and from Romans 3:21 we read of the steps God has taken to meet the situation; for the great Creditor Himself has acted in the matter. What has He done? He has manifested his righteousness in such a way that it rests as a shield of protection “upon all them that believe” (v. 22) instead of falling upon them as an avalanche of destruction as we might have expected.
But where was righteousness of this kind manifested? we may well ask. The answer is— at the cross.
But how? we further inquire. What particular feature in and about the cross of Christ accounts for righteousness of this character? What is it that has enlisted God’s righteousness on our side, and not merely sheltered us by the wing of compassion and mercy from the onslaught of the righteousness which otherwise would condemn? The answer is: propitiation.
At the cross God “set forth” the Lord Jesus “a propitiation through faith in His blood” (v. 25). The word used here is “propitiatory” or “mercy seat” not propitiation exactly but rather the place where, under the law of Moses, the propitiation was made. The force of this will be apparent if we turn to Leviticus 16 where we have the appointed order of the offerings on the great Day of Atonement in Israel, which occurred annually on the tenth day of the seventh month. On that day the high priest slew a bullock as a sin offering for himself and his house, and a goat as a sin offering for the people. The blood of these two victims was not applied in any way to the people, but was carried into the holiest of all and sprinkled on and before the mercy seat, and later was sprinkled on the altar of burnt offering. Thus in type God’s claims were met and His character vindicated in view of the sins of the people.
What the mercy seat was in this typical system, this region of shadows, the Lord Jesus is in the great reality itself. The mercy seat was the place where God met with man (see Ex. 25:21-22) and He is the One in whom God has put Himself into touch with men in a manner and degree altogether unknown before. All, too, has become effective “in His blood” just as the “mercy seat” only became effectively a seat of mercy because of the sprinkled blood. Otherwise it would have speedily proved itself to be a seat of judgment.
What, then, is the effect of Christ’s propitiation as recorded in Romans 3? Just this, that God has been vindicated as regards His dealings with sin and with sinners, as shown in verses 25 and 26. In times past He had passed over the sins of His saints in anticipation of those sins being dealt with at the cross; in this present gospel age He is not merely “remitting” or “passing over” sins, but positively justifying believers in Jesus. Propitiation thus fully made, His righteousness in both these actions is fully declared. No voice can now for one instant be rightly raised to criticize what He has done. Before the death of Christ unbelief might question, though faith, even when confronted with God’s dealings which seemed most perplexing, always said with Abraham, “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?”
Still, now such a question is needless. He has done right. In Christ’s propitiatory work we see every satisfaction due to divine righteousness and holiness rendered in supreme and surpassing degree. We see every sanction of the law upheld, and every attribute of the divine nature displayed in harmonious completeness.
The consequence of all this is that God now presents Himself to men universally as a Saviour-God. Verse 22 of our chapter speaks of “the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe... for all have sinned.” The preposition “unto” indicates the scope or bearing of the thing in question, whereas “upon” indicates rather its actual effect. The need to which the gospel addresses itself is absolutely universal. No less universal is the bearing of the gospel offer. The actual effect of the gospel is more limited; the words now are “all that believe.” The gospel offer in its universality thus rests upon propitiation as its basis. Because God has been completely satisfied as to all that sin is and has done, and therefore every hindrance on His side is removed, He presents Himself to man universally as a forgiving, a justifying God. Except, however, the hindrances upon man’s side be removed hindrances such as pride, self-complacency, and unbelief the gracious gospel offer does not come to fruition. It is only when a sinner comes to repentance and faith in Christ that divine righteousness is “upon” him in blessing. Justification belongs to “all them that believe,” and to them alone.
But this brings us to the second aspect of Christ’s atoning death. The actual word “substitution” does not occur in Scripture. That which the word expresses is found again and again: indeed in one Old Testament chapter it is found quite ten times. We refer to Isaiah 53. In one verse of that chapter we get it four times: “He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed” (v. 5).
The essence of substitution is that one is put in the room and stead of another, and each of the four clauses of this great verse contains that idea. The great and glorious “He” stands in the room and stead of the poor and sinful “us.” The transgressions and the iniquities were ours; the wounding and the bruising were His. Ours are the peace and the healing; His were the chastisement and the stripes that purchased it.
Now if we turn to the closing verse of Romans 4 and the opening verse of Romans 5 the same truth confronts us, only stated with a clearness of detail impossible in Old Testament times. “Jesus our Lord... was delivered for our offenses and raised again for our justification. Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Here note again the “our” and the “we.” He truly was delivered up to death and judgment, but it was for our offenses and not for everybody’s, though as the propitiation He has settled the whole question of sin so that the gospel can be offered to all. He was raised again for our justification, i.e., the justification of all who believe; for we are “justified by faith,” as the next verse shows.
When we consider Christ’s death in its substitutionary aspect, then, we are looking at it not from God’s side but from ours. The point is not how His sacrifice has satisfied the Creditor, but rather how fully He has intervened on behalf of the debtors and of the full clearance which is theirs as a result; always bearing in mind that only those who believe can reckon upon Him as their substitute.
An illustration may help to set the two aspects more clearly before us. Years ago a popular accident insurance scheme was much advertised in the daily press as offering benefits for practically nothing. All you had to do was to give a definite order for the paper in question to a newsagent, and then register as having done so. “A registered reader is an insured reader,” is what one of the papers said.
“How very simple!” you might have exclaimed, “have I nothing to do beyond that?” Nothing! But you must not overlook the fact that the newspaper proprietors had a very big thing to do before the offer was made. The thousands of little registration transactions cost but the stamp that posts them to the office, but behind these lies the great transaction when the newspaper proprietors drew the big check running into many thousands of pounds in favor of the insurance company that undertook the liability.
Now that big premium payment, in view of which the offer went freely forth to all buyers of the paper, is not a bad illustration of propitiation. The offer of God’s forgiveness goes forth on the ground of Christ’s propitiatory sacrifice, and its scope and bearing is nothing less than all men.
When the premium was paid no questions, as to any particular individuals benefiting under the scheme, were raised. The point was that the insurance company was so satisfied that it was able to issue the offer upon a sound basis.
The act of registering under the scheme was on the other hand, purely individual. After all, only the registered reader was the insured reader, and therefore only the one who had registered had the right to speak of the premium paid by the proprietors as a substitute for the premium they otherwise must have paid, had they as individuals approached the insurance company to insure against similar risks. The registration very well illustrates what takes place when a sinner turns to God in repentance and faith. He registers, so to speak, under God’s great salvation scheme. Such an one alone can rightly speak of Christ as being a Substitute for himself, and bearing his sins in His own body on the tree.
We have not labored this point at unnecessary length, for it is a matter of vast importance. The gospel can only be declared with clearness and consistency by those who see the relative place of propitiation and substitution, and thus make the former the great theme of their preaching when addressing themselves as heralds to men at large, and give to the latter its distinctive place as instruction to those who believe. And, further, a correct grasp of these things goes a long way towards solving those intellectual difficulties which so many have found in putting together the two things equally taught in Scripture the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man, connected with the free offers of God’s grace.
By some propitiation is derided upon the pretext that it reduces God to the level of some heathen deity who is supposed to be only kept in good temper by sacrifices of blood. How would you answer them?
By asserting two things. First, that the teaching of the Bible is not that God is ill-disposed toward us, a frowning Deity to be continually pacified by propitiatory sacrifices which change His feelings toward us. That is the corrupt heathen conception. The Bible presentation of the truth runs thus, “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10). Far from our having to change His heart toward us by a propitiatory sacrifice, His heart which is toward man is the very source of all our blessing. Our sins had made propitiation necessary, but He Himself provided the necessary sacrifice.
Secondly, we point out who the propitiation was. He “sent His Son.” One who Himself was God became the propitiation! A profound mystery, surely, but how far removed from the degrading heathen ideas which have been quoted. Propitiation emphatically was not needed to change God’s heart from being against us to being for us. It was rather the most perfect expression of His love. This the Apostle points out, exclaiming, “Herein is love!”
If propitiation was not needed to change God’s disposition in regard to us, in what did the necessity for it lie?
The answer is: in the essential holiness of His nature and the righteousness of His throne.
It must never be forgotten that God is the supreme Governor of the universe. If He permits any moral laxity, any deviation from strict righteousness, who will maintain what is right anywhere? God’s righteousness, maintained unflinchingly and without compromise, is the sheet anchor upon which everything depends. If that drags the whole universe would drift upon the rocks of utter wrong.
Therefore it is that the maintenance of righteousness and holiness always stands first with Him, and nothing in the way of blessing can reach sinners except their every claim and demand is first met.
Propitiation is the meeting of all those prior claims in such full fashion that instead of righteousness being totally against man it is now “unto all” (Rom. 3:22). On the ground of propitiation righteousness stands, as it were, with outstretched arms bidding any and every man to find shelter in its bosom. And the propitiation itself is the fruit of the love of God.
With propitiation we generally connect the idea of appeasing wrath. Is this correct in regard to God?
Clearly it is. Righteousness and wrath stand closely connected as a matter of eternal fact. Wrath gives sanction to righteousness and enforces it. Without it righteousness would be impotent. The practice of government amongst men is an illustration of this. No matter how righteous and virtuous a government may be, without powers and penalties to enforce its decrees it comes to grief.
Righteousness and wrath are also closely connected in Scripture. Verses 17 and 18 of Romans 1 are a proof of this.
In the presence of sin God’s righteousness has tremendous claims. He also has infinite power and will execute wrath and vengeance as Romans 2:2-9 states.
Does the fact of propitiation authorize us to go to any man and tell him that his sins are forgiven?
It does not. It quite authorizes us to go to any man and tell him that Christ has died for him, and consequently forgiveness is preached to him (Acts 13:38). This we can do because as a propitiation He gave Himself “a ransom for all,” He died “for the ungodly.” The forgiveness of sins, however, is the portion of those who believe only, inasmuch as it involves substitution.
Forgiveness may indeed be freely preached to all men, but only those who believe are forgiven.
The Lord’s parable of the two debtors in Luke 7 would seem to imply that Simon, the unbelieving Pharisee, was as much forgiven as the penitent woman. Is this interpretation of the Lord’s words a correct one?
Our English translation runs: “When they had nothing to pay he frankly forgave them both” (v. 42), and this quite seems to support the interpretation you name. But, as a matter of fact, the word used here and translated “frankly forgave” in verse 42 and “forgave” in verse 43 is one which means to be gracious or favorable to; whereas the word used by the Lord in verses 47 and 48 is the usual word for forgive, meaning to send off or away. Any good concordance, such as Young’s or Strong’s, will show you this.
The creditor of the Lord’s parable was gracious to both debtors in view of their bankrupt condition, just as God, on the ground of propitiation, is at the present acting in grace towards all men, and presenting to them in the gospel forgiveness of sins.
The woman who drew near to Jesus with tears of repentance and faith had her sins actually forgiven. “Thy sins are forgiven” — i.e., sent away— dismissed. That was never said to Simon the Pharisee.
Does not such a statement, such as “Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many,” make it appear that Christ only died for the elect?
Such a scripture views His death strictly from the standpoint of substitution and is concerned only with the actual effects of His work amongst men. From this standpoint He bore the sins only of those who believe, and these are the elect.
A similar scripture is: “The Son of Man came... to give His life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). Here again the actual result of His death amongst men is in question. But we also read: “The Man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself a ransom for all” (1 Tim. 2:5, 6). Here, taking up the standpoint of propitiation, the value of His death before God is in question, and hence the scope and bearing of His death towards all men comes into view.
Does not the teaching that Christ died for all logically lead to universal salvation?
The teaching that Christ died as a Substitute for all would obviously lead to universal salvation as a logical conclusion; but the Bible teaching is not that, but that He is the propitiation for “the whole world” (1 John 2:2). This no more involves the ultimate salvation of everybody than the newspaper’s big premium payment involved the definite insurance of every one of its readers.
It did involve this: that every reader was eligible for the insurance and had the offer of it; just as propitiation involves an open door into salvation for all, and a worldwide gospel message.
But definite insurance was secured by registration. “A registered reader is an insured reader,” was the slogan adopted. We may take upon our lips the statement that “a repentant and believing sinner is a forgiven sinner.” This, thank God, is the truth of the gospel.
The copyright for this material is assigned to Scripture Truth Publications. Used by permission.
Resurrection and Glory
No fact of Scripture is more wonderful than this there is a risen Man in the glory of God. It is the appropriate sequel to the wonder of God having been manifested in the flesh, as 1 Timothy 3:16 declares. It is also the basis of a third wonder, i.e., the descent of the Holy Spirit to dwell in the believer on earth, according to John 7:39.
We are also well within the mark when we say that no fact of Scripture is verified with such abundant care as this. In 1 Corinthians 15:3-4 the Apostle Paul rehearses the gospel which he preached. The death of Christ for our sins and His burial are stated and left, for there was no need to verify these facts since they were beyond dispute and acknowledged by all. He passes to the third fact of the gospel, “That He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures,” and in support of this he adduces a host of witnesses. The resurrection of Christ had not the same publicity and was not carried out with spectacular effect as was His death. Nevertheless, it is the very keystone of the whole arch of divine truth, as verses 13 to 19 show. How necessary, then, for the Apostle to start by showing that the resurrection of Christ is a fact beyond dispute.
In verses 5 and 8 Paul cites six different occasions on which the risen Lord was seen. He commences with an individual, Cephas or Peter; he mentions that as many as five hundred saw Him at one time, he finishes with his own personal witness, and he saw Him not only risen but in glory. The list he gives is by no means exhaustive. He does not cite the women who saw Him, nor say anything of Stephen. The wealth of witness which he does cite makes it, however, quite evident that if Christ’s resurrection be not a certain fact there is no event of history of which we can be sure.
Having established the certainty of this great fact the Apostle proceeds to demonstrate its commanding importance. His argument in 1 Corinthians 15:14-19 is based upon the hypothesis of the non-resurrection of Christ. If He be not risen, what then? Why, the whole fabric of faith and blessing would collapse into ruin. The Apostle’s preaching would be vain, and they would stand convicted as false witnesses. The faith of the Corinthians, or of any Christian today, would be vain, and such would then be as much in their sins as anyone else. The saints who have died in Christ would be in no state of blessedness at all, but would have perished. We, the living saints, would be of all men most miserable, for we would incur certain worldly disadvantages by believing, and so merely get a little extra trouble in this life with no recompense in the life to come. Truly the resurrection of Christ is the keystone of the arch. Dislodge that, and every stone of the arch falls out.
But equally we may liken it to the foundation stone upon which the temple of truth stands. It is the guarantee of the accomplishment of all God’s purposes. In verse 20 the Apostle turns from the negative supposition to the positive assertion that Christ is risen, and he proceeds to enumerate all that is involved in it. Commencing with the resurrection of the saints at His coming, he does not stop until he reaches, at the close of verse 28, the eternal state where God shall be all in all. The glory of that day will be the topstone, just as the resurrection of Christ is the foundation.
The certainty of Christ’s resurrection proved, and its commanding importance stated, we have in the latter part of the chapter the bearing of resurrection in regard to ourselves, and great light is thrown on its meaning, on what it really involves, for the believer.
We see, for instance, that resurrection is not mere restoration to life under the ordinary conditions that prevail in this world, as was the case when our Lord restored to life the son of the widow of Nain, or Lazarus of Bethany. These men resumed their life in this world and subsequently died again. Resurrection involves life in altogether new conditions, as verses 42-44 show. Our lives in this world are characterized by our possessing natural bodies with their attendant weaknesses, ending in the corruption and dishonor of the grave. In resurrection we shall be possessed of spiritual bodies characterized by incorruption and glory and power.
Further, as the still later verse of the chapter show, our present bodies are in the image of Adam, the earthly man, and mortal. In resurrection our bodies will bear the image of Christ, the heavenly Man, and be immortal and incorruptible. Resurrection, moreover, is the public declaration of victory over death and the grave, so that when the saints stand in their risen condition the saying, “Death is swallowed up in victory,” will be triumphantly fulfilled. For this we wait, but while we wait we are already rejoicing in it, for God “giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (v. 57)
After all, the victory that is yet to be altogether depends upon the victory that already has been. In the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump, the saints, as a mighty army, will stand forth in glory as a fruit of the resurrection change. Their victory will be great, their hearts full, their praises abundant.
“This is our redeeming God!
Ransomed hosts will shout aloud.”
But greater even than this was that yet more fundamental victory when the Lord Jesus, in the early hours of the first day of the week, came forth in a resurrection body from the grave of Joseph, closed with the seal and guarded by the soldiers We have no victory apart from His. All is “through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
This leads us again to consider His resurrection. He, too, was not restored to continue life even His perfect life marked by every moral beauty in this world. This was the mistake of Mary Magdalene on the resurrection day. She imagined He had come back like Lazarus on the old footing, and she had to learn He was, as risen, on an altogether new footing. He had laid down His life and taken it again as He said (John 10:17), but He had taken it up in new and heavenly conditions suited to the place of supreme glory He was so soon to occupy at the right hand of God.
How clear this chapter makes it that the Lord Jesus is today a Man in glory. His resurrection did not involve His discarding the Manhood He had assumed in incarnation, as some seem to think. It involved rather the coming forth of His holy body, which never saw corruption, in new and spiritual conditions. His body is now altogether beyond the possibility of death, a body which, according to our chapter and Philippians 3:21, is the glorious pattern to which our risen bodies are to be conformed; a body, therefore, in which He abides forever.
And that risen Man is in glory! A truly astounding fact. The Old Testament view of things is stated pretty concisely in Psa. 115:16. “The heaven, even the heavens, are the Lord’s: but the earth hath He given to the children of men.” The earth was emphatically man’s sphere as he was originally created, and there was the place of his dominion. In keeping with this you find “heaven” mentioned about thirty-eight times only in the Psalms, and then not infrequently as only indicating the atmospheric heavens, where the birds fly and the clouds float; whereas “earth” is mentioned one hundred and thirty-five times at least. The New Testament view, consequent upon the exaltation of Christ, is very different and vastly enlarged.
Read Ephesians 1:20-23 by way of contrast to the verse in Psa. 115. Note that God not only raised Christ from the dead but “set Him at His own right hand in the heavenly places.” In those scenes, untainted by sin, there are various ranks of spiritual beings, as well as authorities upon earth, whether in this age, in their very imperfect condition, or in the age to come when they will be perfectly controlled from heaven. Well, the risen Man is above them all. And not only above but far above. He is Head and Chief over every one of them, and, further, He is Head to His body the Church in a far more intimate way. Small wonder then that we who compose the Church should be spoken of in verse 3 of the chapter as blessed “with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ.”
Here let us again note that in all this the Lord Jesus is our Great Representative. We rejoice in His resurrection and glory for His own sake, but we do not forget how great the bearing of it all on ourselves. His resurrection was the loosing of the pains of death (see Acts 2:24). Death, of course, had no claim on Him personally. It had substitutionally, inasmuch as He espoused our cause and on the cross assumed our liabilities. Hence His resurrection involves the loosing of us from all pains and penalties. He was liberated, but so were we. He was “delivered for our offenses and raised again for our justification” (Rom. 4:25). In view of this His resurrection is often spoken of as the receipt which God has given into the believer’s hand, proclaiming the complete discharge of all his liabilities which were taken up by the Lord Jesus in His death.
It is even more than this. It is also the pledge and beginning of that new creation into which the believer is brought. It is like the olive leaf with which the dove returned in the evening after Noah had sent her forth for the second time over the waste of waters (Gen. 8:6-12).
The dove, emblematic of the Holy Spirit of God, was sent forth three times. On the first occasion it returned with nothing. There was no rest for the sole of her foot, for the waters were everywhere. This sets forth the utter ruin of the first man and of the old creation as connected with him. All were submerged in death. On the second occasion she returned with the solitary olive leaf. At last the first bit of the renewed earth had appeared above the waters. Here we see that in the second Man pleasure is found. His resurrection was the beginning, solitary as yet, of the new creation. On the third occasion the dove found not a simple leaf only, but a resting place for her feet, just as the day is coming when in a renewed earth the Spirit of God will be poured forth abundantly, or as in the new creation scenes beyond the millennial age He will dwell in perfect complacency.
How excellent the thought that in the risen and glorified Man, Christ Jesus, we see the pledge and beginning of those...
“bright and blessed scenes
Where sin can never come,
Whose sight our longing spirit weans
From earth where yet we roam.”
Modern unbelievers do not hesitate to question the fact of Christ’s resurrection, even denying the reality of His death in their effort to avoid it. What can be said to such?
Very little. As a matter of fact and history the resurrection of Christ has been logically proved with a fullness and exactitude to which very few, if any, of the great events of time can lay claim. If men put the telescope to the blind eye like Nelson, and will not see the evidence, words are of little avail.
Most of them probably see quite clearly that of all the miracles the resurrection stands first, and that if that be granted they cannot consistently object to much else that is in the Scriptures merely on the ground of it being miraculous.
Why did the apostolic preaching, as recorded in the Acts, take the resurrection of Christ, rather than His death as its central theme?
Because, as we have said, His death was admitted by all, and in regard to that they had but to explain its meaning. His resurrection was fiercely contested. Here the apostles faced the point of strongest opposition and they knew that if the Spirit of God carried home their testimony to the breaking up of resistance here, the whole position of unbelief gave way.
Incidentally it shows that neither the apostles nor the men of that day were credulous people who easily received any story. Paul had to say, “Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you that God should raise the dead?” (Acts 26:8). So evidently the resurrection seemed to men then as incredible as it seems now; yet the truth of it was maintained by the apostles, and multitudes who received their witness, though for all of them it meant loss in this world, and for many a martyr’s death.
Is it correct to speak of the resurrection of the body? Some have insisted that it is persons that are raised.
You have only to examine carefully the language of 1 Corinthians 15 to see that it is quite scriptural to speak of the resurrection of the body. Unbelieving questions were raised among the Corinthians, particularly in regard to the resurrection body. “How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come?” (v. 35). In replying the apostle likens the burial of the body of a saint to the sowing of a grain of wheat, and he points out the analogy between them. That which is buried or sown has a link of identification with that which is raised or which springs forth from the ground. Yet in both cases the risen condition is far in advance of the former condition. In verse 44 he says plainly, “It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body.” The resurrection of the body could hardly be stated in clearer language
It is a fact, of course, that Scripture, speaking just as we often do in ordinary conversation, sometimes identifies the person with the body rather than with the spirit. “Devout men,” for instance, “carried Stephen to his burial” (Acts 8:2). If we think of Stephen as identified with his spirit, he was, of course, with Christ. Actually they carried but his dead body to burial. Again, John 5:28-29 tells us that “all that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth.” Their spirits are with Christ, it is their bodies that actually come forth.
Some of us have great difficulty in thinking of the Lord Jesus as a Man forever. Is that an assured truth of Scripture?
Well, let us look at the Scriptural evidence step by step.
On the resurrection day He came forth from the grave a real Man in a human body, not a body of flesh and blood as He had before the cross, but of flesh and bones (Luke 24:39); a body in which He could eat (Luke 24:43); a body which bore the marks of His suffering and which could be handled by Thomas (John 20:27).
In that same body He was “carried up into heaven” (Luke 24:51). “A cloud received Him out of their sight” (Acts 1:9). A spirit could not be said to be carried up nor are clouds necessary to receive such out of human sight. He was still a Man.
Shortly after Stephen saw Him in glory. His testimony was, “I see... the Son of man standing on the right hand of God” (Acts 7:56).
Later still Paul writes of Him as “The Man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim. 2:5). He does not speak of Him as the One who once was the Man Christ Jesus. He is a Man today.
The millennial age is to come. It is to be put not under angels but under Man in the person of the Son of Man. This is the argument of Hebrews 2:5-9. Clearly, then, He will be Man in the coming age.
At the end of the millennial age He is to deliver up the kingdom to God, even the Father, and become Himself subject (see 1 Cor. 15:24-28). Bearing in mind that He is God equally with the Father we might with astonishment ask how this can be, save that we remember that also He is Man. As Man, He fills perfectly man’s place of subjection without for one moment ceasing to be equal with the Father. Our blessed Lord is essentially God, yet for eternity He takes the subject place, only explicable by the fact that to all eternity He is also Man; and as such the Head and Sustainer of the redeemed creation, which is the fruit of His work.
Are we right in speaking of glory as a future thing? Jesus is glorified today, is He not?
He certainly is glorified today at the right hand of God. That does not, however, in the least clash with what the Old Testament so abundantly predicts: His coming visible glory in the very scene of His former reproach and dishonor.
When Jesus presented Himself to Israel as their King, entering Jerusalem on an ass as the prophet had predicted, the hour was come that He should be glorified (John 12:23). Was He glorified? No. He had, on the contrary, to speak immediately of His death and its consequences. Yet soon after in the upper chamber He said, “Now is the Son of Man glorified,” only God, having been glorified in the cross, was going to “glorify Him in Himself” and do it “straightway” (John 13:31-32). That is His present glory hidden in the heavens.
In our Lord’s prayer, as recorded in John 17, we get three references to His glory.
In verse 5 He prays to be invested as Man with the glory which He had with the Father before the world was. In this He stands alone.
In verse 24 He speaks of “My glory, which Thou hast given Me.” This is a supreme glory given Him in virtue of His sufferings and death in which also He stands alone though we are to behold it.
In verse 22 He says, “the glory which Thou gavest Me I have given them.” This is the public glory of the coming age in which we, His saints, are to have our happy part.
When He is manifested we shall be manifested with Him in glory.
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Future Punishment: Its Character and Duration
There is no point within the whole compass of divine truth where human thoughts and opinions are of any value. But at no point is it more necessary to rigidly exclude them than from the solemn subject which is now to occupy us. Immediately the punishment of sin is in question we are all of us alert and inclined to make our voices heard. We are none of us disinterested spectators, but rather in the position of a criminal in the dock being tried for his life. Now a criminal is never an unprejudiced judge of his own case, neither are we in this matter of future punishment. So let us begin by recognizing the very natural warp of our fallen reason in relation to this theme, and resolving to close our minds to our own thoughts as to what ought to be, and to listen to the plain declarations of what is going to be, given to us in Scripture by God the Judge of all.
It may be well to begin at the very beginning and inquire if the Bible indicates that there is to be such a thing as punishment at all? There are not wanting those who would do away with the whole idea in relation to God’s government of His creatures, just as there are also those who are always inclined to bewail the bitter fate of the assassin when brought face to face with justice, whilst having scant sympathy, or none at all, to spare for his victim!
Read carefully Romans 2:1-16, and you will find that Scripture testifies with no uncertain sound to the reality of future punishment. There is such a thing as “the judgment of God.” That judgment is going to be expressed in “wrath” in the coming “day of wrath.” It is going to probe beneath the surface of things in that day and deal with “the secrets of men.” And if any should inquire what exactly “wrath” may mean, we are told in further detail when it is said that to those contentious, and who do not obey the truth, God will render “indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish” (v. 9), and that without any respect of persons.
There is nothing surprising in these statements. They are guise after the analogy of those dealings of God’s government which are visible to us. He most evidently has attached temporal penalties to sins, which are often clearly to be seen in this life. Why not, then, the full and proper penalties in the life to come?
Another question now comes up for settlement. Granted that the future punishment of sin is a reality, what is to be its character? Is it remedial and reformatory, or is it penal and retributory? A very important question, for the answer to it will go a long way towards settlement of the subsequent question as to its duration. If punishment in the life to come is with the object of making its subjects better, it stands to reason that it cannot be forever.
Is future punishment spoken of in Scripture as an instrument of reformation? Is hell to be a great penitentiary, designed to effect that betterment in recalcitrant mankind which the preaching of grace never effected? We unhesitatingly answer, No.
Not only do we answer, No, but we go further and assert that at no time do we find reformation produced by God’s dealings in judgment. In Egypt God dealt with Pharaoh, increasing the severity of His strokes. Was his heart softened? No, it was hardened. Later, God dealt in the same way with His apostate people Israel as He said He would in Leviticus 26. After foretelling some of the dreadful calamities to come He says in verse 23, “If ye will not be reformed by Me in these things... then will I... punish you yet seven times for your sins.” Were they reformed? No; the extremes punishments indicated came upon them as a nation. Concerning future judgment we read in Revelation 16:11 how men will blaspheme the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, and will not repent of their deeds.
Today, thank God, men do repent, but why? Because, as Romans 2:4 tells us, it is “the goodness of God” that leads to repentance. But it is this very chapter that asserts that if men do not suffer the goodness of God to take them by the hand and lead them to repentance, they will find themselves seized by the severity of God and brought to judgment.
We do not need to go outside that passage to discover what character the judgment of God bears. It is said to be “against them which commit such things,” for they are “worthy of death” according to the last verse of Romans 1. The sinner is asked if he thinks that he shall “escape the judgment of God.” This language is not that which befits reformation but points clearly to retribution.
The fact is, this idea that hell is a kind of penitentiary, which is hardly distinguishable from the purgatory of the Romanist, cuts right at the roots of the gospel. Salvation never has been, is not today, and never will be by reformation. Salvation is by faith and on the ground of the penalty and retribution of sin having been borne— of old typically in connection with the sacrifices, now borne really and fully by the sacrifice of Christ Himself upon the cross.
Salvation by a reformation which, it is claimed, the fires of hell will produce, might be conceivable if it were accomplished today by a reformation which the gospel produces. Since, however, it is today only to be found in the bearing of sin’s righteous penalty and retribution by another, the Lord Jesus Christ, it could only be found in eternity by a similar bearing of the penalty, and this will never be; for Christ will not suffer again, and no sinner can take up the penalty and exhaust it. If a sinner passes under sin’s penalty, under it he must remain forever.
No Scripture referring to future punishment treats it as a matter of reformation, and a great many of the passages are so worded as clearly to negate that idea, and show it is a matter of retribution As an instance of this latter class take 1 Peter 4:17-18. That Apostle asks, “If it [judgment] first begin at us [Christians] what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God? and if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?” He evidently knew well enough that no one with any show of truth could turn round and say, “Why, of course, the end of those that obey not the gospel will be just the same as that of those who obey: the ungodly and sinners will ultimately appear, refined by age-long fires, in the same heaven as the godly and the saints.”
That which lies ahead of the ungodly and sinners as their end is “judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries” (Heb. 10:27).
Now we approach the fateful question: Does Scripture indicate that this coming fiery indignation of God against sinners will be forever? The answer is that it clearly does so.
Take as one example out of many scriptures, Matthew 25:46. The words we allude to were spoken by the Lord Himself as the climax of His description of the judgment He will execute on the living nations assembled before Him, as He begins His millennial reign. “These shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.”
That particular judgment, then, will have a twofold issue. It will be either life or punishment. Life in its full and proper sense will embrace all that aggregate of privileges, relationships, and blessings, the crown of all being the knowledge of the Lord, of which the earth will then be full. Punishment will embrace all those woes and penalties which are appropriate to the state of sin in which men generally are found, and to the individual sins of those in question, including the crowning one of the rejection of the divine testimony through those whom the King acknowledges as His brethren. And both the life and the punishment are eternal. No one seems anxious to prove that eternal life is not eternal. Multitudes labor to explain that eternal punishment is not eternal. Why? It is simply a case of the prisoner in the dock revolting against his sentence! Apart from such prejudice— natural enough, but very fatal if indulged in— there is no reason for denying to eternal in the first half of the sentence what is freely admitted as to it in the second. Scripturally both parts stand or fall together.
This scripture is only one out of many that might be cited, from the solemn warnings of our Lord as to the worm that never dies and “the fire that never shall be quenched,” in the gospels, to the awful words as to “the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death,” in the last book of the New Testament. There really is no doubt as to what is the testimony of Scripture on the point, though the attempts to juggle with its words and make them give another voice have been, and still continue to be, without number.
With all the ingenuity that has been expended and wasted in this way only two alternatives to eternal punishment have ever been imagined. The one is that in some way or other all will finally be saved. This is known as “universalism.” The other is that man naturally just dies as the beasts that perish and that endless being and existence are only his as born again and in Christ. This is known as “annihilationism” or the “conditional immortality” theory.
Now one verse of Scripture— John 3:36— utterly destroys both theories. We read: “He that believeth not the Son shall not see life.” The universalist theory is that ultimately, no matter how remote the age may be, he shall see life. The Lord Jesus says he shall not. He added, “But the wrath of God abideth on him.” According to the annihilationist he is non-existent and therefore not there for the wrath of God to abide upon. According to the Lord Jesus he is there and upon him the wrath abides, without any hint of a moment when it ceases to abide.
The Lord Jesus thus, with divine foreknowledge, negated these specious theories of a later age.
By this denial of the two rival theories, therefore, we come back to the solemn fact, so abundantly stated in a positive way in Scripture, that there is such a thing as future punishment, that it is in the nature of solemn retribution for sin, and that once falling it endures forever.
That the punishment of sin should be eternal is a dreadful thought. Can it be defended as just, and therefore right?
It is truly a dreadful thought, and the reality will be more dreadful still; but, then, sin is a dreadful thing. Who can measure sin’s demerit? Can we embrace within our finite minds the full bearing, the uttermost ramifications, of an act of lawless rebellion against God? No, indeed. That would be as impossible as to embrace within our arms the solar system of which this earth is a very insignificant part. Who are we, then, to form and express opinions as to what may be the just and proper punishment to fit the case?
God is “the Judge of all the earth” and He will do right. Let us quit the folly of attempting to pronounce upon what He ought to do, and rather pay attention to what He has stated in the Scriptures that He will do; for that, and that alone, will ultimately stand.
Is it, however, quite certain that the Greek word rendered “eternal” and “everlasting” in our version really has the force of “endless”? May it not just mean “age-long,” as its derivation would indicate?
As quite true that the Greek adjective aionios is built up from aion—an age, hence age-lasting may have been one of its meanings. The word, however, acquired the sense of eternal, and this is its sense in Scripture, as a good concordance will easily show you. It is used in regard to God, the Spirit, salvation, redemption, life, and many other great verities of the faith. So that we may say that except it does denote endlessness we know of nothing at all that is endless.
One of the most conclusive passages we can cite on this point is 2 Corinthians 4:18, where the Apostle contrasts the things which are seen with those not seen. The former, he says, are “temporal,” the latter, “eternal.”
Here the word eternal must be used in the sense of “having no end,” otherwise it would be no true contrast to temporal, which means “having an end.” The seen things may endure for many thousands of years— for ages, as we speak. They may be age-long but they have an end. The unseen things abide not for ages merely, but forever. They have no end.
Here, then, we shall surely find used the true and proper word for eternal if the Greek language possesses it, and not merely a word meaning “age-lasting.” We turn up a Greek Testament, and what word do we find? Could proof be stronger that in Scripture usage aionios means eternal in its true and proper sense?
Some people think that eternal punishment cannot be reconciled with the fact that God is love, and therefore they refuse to believe it. Is there any force in this argument?
None whatever. The Scriptures reveal equally both facts, so that those who speak thus are really leveling their accusation of inconsistency at the Bible.
As a matter of fact, however, there is no inconsistency at all, but the very reverse. The strongest possible abhorrence is quite consistent with the strongest possible affection; we would indeed go further and say it is inseparable from it. It is impossible to regard any one with deep love and not heartily hate all that imperils that person in any way.
There is nothing, therefore, incompatible with God’s love in His declared purpose to segregate all that is evil in eternity. At present good and evil seem hopelessly mixed in this world. A day is coming in which they will be finally disentangled. Good will bask in the sunshine of His favor. Evil will lie eternally beneath His frown. Thus, evil, eternally shut up in its own place, and enduring its just penalty, will no longer be able to threaten the peace and blessing of God’s redeemed creation.
No one regards the isolation of smallpox patients or the still more sorrowful life-isolation of lepers as measures incompatible with benevolence amongst men. Why, then, object to God acting with similar intent in eternity?
Hell is sometimes painted in such lurid colors that minds are revolted. Is there foundation for this?
Imagination has, we fear, often run riot with this solemn subject, and people sometimes mistake Dante’s “Inferno” for the hell of the Bible. This has furnished a useful handle to those who would deny the whole subject. The Bible speaks as ever in the language of reserve and restraint, yet the glimpses it gives are full of terror and it evidently is not intended that they should be otherwise.
To be incarcerated in sin’s great prison house for all eternity in conscious torment will be a fearful thing, and it is the kindness of God that plainly warns us of sin’s consequences.
Moreover, it is evidently God’s way to have a memorial of sin’s effects, even when those effects are otherwise not visible. During the millennial age, for instance, when the face of the earth will be smiling with abundant fruitfulness, and mankind will be richly blessed, there will be certain spots of which it is written, “they shall not be healed; for they shall be given to salt” (Ezek. 47:11), and also in some way “the carcases of the men that have transgressed” against the Lord will be preserved so that men shall “go forth and look, upon” them (Isa. 66:23, 24). It will be salutary for those blessed in that delightful age to have before them reminders of sin’s former havoc both in nature and amongst men.
May there not be an analogy between God’s action in such matters and His action in the far greater matter of an eternal hell? Who can affirm that the solemn doom of the lost in the lake of fire may not have some such service to render throughout eternity?
Is it clear from Scripture that the souls of men are immortal? The doctrine of eternal punishment can hardly be maintained apart from that.
In Scripture the adjectives “mortal” and “immortal” are applied to man’s body, and we do not find the phrase “immortal soul.” Yet it is quite clear that the soul, or spiritual part of man, survives death. Our Lord said, “Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul” (Matt. 10:28). He used here a word of strong force, meaning “to kill utterly or entirely.” A feeble man may easily thus kill the body of another, but the soul is immortal and eludes him. The Lord added, “fear Him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell,” and here He changed the word and used another, which means, “to mar or ruin, as regards the purpose for which a thing exists.” It is the word used for perish in John 3:16, and for the perishing of the bottles in Matthew 9:17. It is also used in Matthew 27:20, when we read of the leaders persuading the multitude “that they should ask Barabbas and destroy Jesus.” A very clear proof this, that destruction does not mean annihilation.
The whole verse teaches, first, that the soul is not mortal like the body, and, second, that in hell God intends not to annihilate, but to bring down into ruin, the whole man, both soul and body.
The soul, therefore, is immortal, for man has it in connection with spirit, receiving it by the divine in-breathing as Genesis 2:7 records. Becoming a “living soul” in this fashion, man is not as the; beasts which perish.
There are many who argue that just as death is ceasing to exist, so the lake of fire, which is the second death, must imply total cessation of existence. Is this reasoning sound?
Viewed as a piece of reasoning, it is about as feeble and fallacious as can be. Were we to reply in a reasoning vein, we should simply observe that if death is ceasing to exist then there can be no second death. You can’t cease to exist in any proper sense, and yet exist so as to cease to exist in a second death! What strange things men will say in their efforts to overthrow the plain truth of God.
Yet, superficially, the statement has the appearance of being a real objection. This is derived from the giving of a false value to one of the great words of Scripture, i.e., death.
This word occurs first in Genesis 2:17, and Genesis 3 is the record of how the death sentence fell on our first parents. Its use in the Bible is constant until we reach the last chapter but one of the New Testament, where we find “a new heaven and a new earth” where “there shall be no more death,” and yet at the same time “the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.” Now, right through, we affirm that death never means “ceasing to exist,” but always has the force of separation: either, the separation of the creature spiritually and morally from God, in which sense men are “dead in trespasses and sins”; or the separation of soul and spirit from the body, which is death physically; or yet again the final separation of the whole man, if unrepentant and unsaved, from God and all that is good and bright and worth possessing, in the lake of fire, and that is the second death.
The first use of the word death in Genesis 2 and 3 clearly bears this out. God threatened Adam with death on the day of his disobedience. Adam disobeyed and lived on to the age of nine hundred and thirty years. Was it, then, an idle threat? Not at all. The day he sinned he died, in the first sense of the word, i.e., he became totally separated and estranged from his Maker, “dead in sins.” His physical death was deferred inasmuch as the Lord brought death that day upon some other denizen or denizens of the garden and clothed the guilty sinners with their skins. Centuries after, physical death supervened. Adam then passed out of all touch with this world, but he exists as regards God. As the Lord Himself said, “all live unto Him” (Luke 20:38).
We therefore repeat with emphasis: death, in Scripture, does not mean “ceasing to exist.”
So many people, apparently true Christians, cannot accept the teaching of eternal punishment. Is it of such great moment whether they do or whether they do not?
Seeing that all the items of God’s truth are not so many isolated fragments, but one whole, each item being like a stone of an arch, it matters much. Knock out one stone and you never know which will go next.
Suppose that, after all, eternal punishment is a mistake, then whichever alternative view we adopt we must at least conclude that sin is a matter much less grave than we had supposed; that its demerit, though perhaps considerable, cannot be infinite. That being so, we need not suppose that an infinite sacrifice is needed to atone for it, nor, consequently, that it must be necessary for a Person of infinite worth and value to become that sacrifice. Logically, therefore, we can abandon without difficulty the great truth of atonement by blood, and of the deity of our Lord Jesus Christ. We could quite consistently and conveniently become of Unitarian persuasion.
And as a matter of fact and history, it is to Unitarianism, full-blown, that the denial of eternal punishment has always led, though not all advance to the final conclusions with giant strides.
That is why the denial of eternal punishment is a matter of such gravity.
The copyright for this material is assigned to Scripture Truth Publications. Used by permission.
The Work and Indwelling of the Spirit of God
The third Person of the ever-blessed Trinity, the Holy Spirit of God, is presented to us in Scripture as the One from whom the living energies of the Godhead proceed. He is first mentioned in Genesis 1:2 as moving in creation and there giving effect to the Word of God. He is last mentioned in Revelation 22:17 as energizing “the bride” and producing in her heart a suitable response to the Bridegroom, who presents Himself as “I, Jesus.”
These references to Him are highly significant. The first gives us, by way of analogy, a broad outline of His great work in connection with redemption, i.e., giving effect to the Word of God. The last indicates the full and blessed effect of His indwelling, i.e., producing in saints a full and adequate response to the revelation made and to the relationships which love has established.
To God the Father belongs initiative. All purpose, counsel, direction, are His. To God the Son belongs administration the execution of the divine purpose whether in creation, redemption, or judgment. To God the Holy Ghost belongs the energy all-pervading that, acting always in perfect harmony with the Father’s counsels and the Son’s administration, produces the desired effects whether upon matter in creation, or upon the souls and ultimately the bodies of saints in connection with redemption.
The redemption work of the Lord Jesus has been done for us. The work of the Holy Spirit is being wrought in us. The former is accomplished quite outside ourselves at the cross. It is set before us as an object of our faith; we look out at it. We speak of it, therefore, as an objective work, and truth connected with it as objective truth. The latter is something accomplished within us. Instead of regarding it as an object before us we find ourselves the subjects of it. We speak of it as a subjective work, and truth connected with it as subjective truth.
It is first of all necessary to observe that the Spirit’s work precedes His indwelling. Man, in the flesh, i.e., in his unconverted condition, is no fit dwelling place for the Spirit of God. This was foreshadowed both in the consecration of Aaron’s sons (Ex. 29) and in the cleansing of the leper (Lev. 14). In both there was observed this order: first, the bathing with water; second, the application of blood; and third, the anointing with oil, typical of the fact that the Spirit can only be given when man comes under the action of the water and the blood. In other words, it is only when the Spirit has applied the water in new birth, and the blood in the knowledge of redemption, that he can take up His abode.
New birth is clearly the work of the Spirit of God. A man must be “born of water and of the Spirit” (John 3:5). The water, figurative of the Word, is the instrument or vehicle; the Spirit, the Agent or Power. In 1 Peter 1:22-25 the same great truth is referred to, only the emphasis is rather laid upon the Word of God which is living and abiding, and which presents itself to us today in the gospel which is preached unto us, and the Spirit of God is referred to as Him by whom we have purified our souls in obeying the truth. In John 3 the chief emphasis is laid upon the Spirit’s operation, and it is declared that He begets His like “that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.”
In John 3 there is the clearest possible distinction between “a man... born again” and “the Son of Man... lifted up.” We just say this to emphasize once more the point that new birth, the beginning of the Spirit’s work, is not something done outside of us, at the cross, once for all, but is wrought in us each individually one by one.
Now, new birth having been carried into effect with any given person, there is produced within that which is born of the Spirit, and is spirit as to its nature, contrasted with flesh, the nature we possess as born of Adam’s race. This new spirit-nature is called the “inward man” in Romans 7:22, and as prompted by that inward man the believer “delights in the law of God.” Verses 7-25 are the detailing of an experience and marked by the constant repetition of the pronouns “I,” “me,” “my,” consequent upon the distress occasioned to the speaker the “I” by the conflicting desires of the two natures, “the flesh” on the one hand, “the inward man” on the other. But amongst the lessons learned in the course of that experience is this, that God (and therefore also faith in us) only recognizes the new spirit-nature; the old is utterly worthless. In it is no good (Rom. 7:18), and in the cross it has been condemned (Rom. 8:3).
The horticultural process of grafting is a good illustration of this point. The gardener selects a stock sapling quite worthless in itself and condemns it by cutting it hard back till but the stump remains. He then inserts the twig of value, let us say some dessert apple. When once the graft is effectively made, he no longer in any way owns the old nature. He always speaks of the tree by the name of the engrafted twig. It is the same tree as far as its identity goes. The two natures are there as experience will prove, but the new nature is the dominant nature and the acknowledged nature of the “born-again” tree.
No matter what the time or dispensation, this tremendous operation of the Spirit of God— new birth— is necessary if a soul is to have to do with God in blessing; consequently in all ages men have been born again.
The indwelling of the Spirit of God is a blessing, however, quite characteristic of the present age. Before it could be, redemption had to be accomplished; sins must be expiated and sin condemned. The cross of Christ having become an accomplished fact and Christ having been raised and glorified, the Spirit was given as recorded in the second chapter of Acts.
In Old Testament times not only were men born again of the Spirit of God, but also in different cases He came upon them in extraordinary power, energizing them for special service. In these cases He came for a brief occasion with no thought of permanency. Hence, when the Lord Jesus promised the “Comforter,” as recorded in John 14, John 15, and John 16, He spoke of Him as coming to be “in you” and “that He may abide with you forever.”
When the Spirit of God descended, as recorded in Acts 2, He came in a twofold way. First, He indwelt each individual saint present on that occasion. This plainly appears in the narrative. There were the “cloven tongues like as of fire,” signalizing His presence, and it adds, “it sat upon each of them.” But, secondly, His coming meant the formation of the Church as 1 Corinthians 12:13 tells us, “by one, Spirit are we all baptized into one body,” and having formed this “one body” — the Church— He also made it the house of God by His indwelling. We are “builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit” (Eph. 2:22). This larger indwelling is not mentioned in Acts 2, though perhaps it is symbolized in the fact that the “sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind... filled all the house where they were sitting.”
If we inquire a little more closely as to the way the Spirit of God indwells the individual believer, we find that He comes bearing a threefold character. He is the Seal, the Earnest, and the Anointing as stated in 2 Corinthians 1:21-22.
As the Seal He secures us for God and marks us out as His (see Eph. 4:30). As the Earnest He is the pledge and fore taste of all those blessed realities which are yet to be ours in the day of glory (see 2 Cor. 5:5; Eph. 1:14). As the Anointing, or Unction— this latter word is used in 1 John 2:20— He endows the believer with the capacity to apprehend and enjoy the things of God (see 1 John 2:27), and also empowers for worship and the service of God. This is illustrated in the case of the Lord Himself (see Acts 10:38)
Then, again, if we take such a chapter as Romans 8, we find that the Spirit of God, so graciously given to the believer, is identified with and characterizes the new state formed in him by His power: i.e. the Spirit of God is the energy of that new being and nature which is the believer’s as the result of the new birth. It can be said, therefore, that “the Spirit is life” (v. 10). He is also “the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus” and exerts His controlling power or “law,” thus setting the believer free from “the law of sin and death” (v. 2). Indeed, that remarkable chapter sets the Spirit before us as filling various other capacities in connection with the practical life of the Christian, but these we have not space to deal with particularly, for we must turn to the work He does as indwelling the believer.
He works, as we have seen, before He indwells, grappling with the conscience, breaking the will, and finally producing new birth. This is something like the building of a suitable house for Himself. Then He takes up His abode so that the very body of the believer becomes the temple of the Holy Ghost (1 Cor. 6:19). But we must not suppose that this is the end of everything. As indwelling He still works.
In the chapters in John already referred to (14, 15, 16), the Lord Jesus especially emphasized the teaching of the Spirit as regards His disciples. He would “teach” them “all things.” He would “guide” them “into all truth.” This was doubtless true in an especial degree of the apostles to whom He was speaking, inasmuch as they were to be the original depositories of the further revelations which are now contained in the Epistles. Admitting this, it is still true in a general sense of every believer, even the most recently converted— the babe— as 1 John 2:27 shows. The teaching work of the Spirit goes deeper than the mere imparting of information. He instructs so effectually that the believer not only knows mentally but is also possessed by the things that he knows. They are made living and operative in his life.
Then He strengthens as well as instructs. The Apostle prayed that the Ephesian saints might be “strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man” (Eph. 3:10). The inner man itself is the fruit of the Spirit’s earlier working, but it needs to be strengthened if Christ is to dwell in the heart by faith.
Connected with this is His transforming work as spoken of in 2 Corinthians 3:18. We Christians, in contrast to Israel, have before us the unveiled glory of the Lord, and not the partial and veiled glory of the law as reflected in the face of Moses. Beholding that unveiled glory, we are changed or transformed “into the same image” from one degree of glory to another, “as by the Spirit of the Lord.”
How vast the range of all those things which have come to light in the revelation which has reached us! Each item has its own peculiar glory which streams toward one central point of focus— the Lord Jesus Christ. His glory shines everywhere, and we may see it without a veil between. As we behold, we are transformed by the Spirit’s power, and transformed into the same image, the very character of Christ being thus produced in us. This is perhaps the very crown and climax of the Spirit’s work in the believer. He transforms, writing upon the fleshy table of the heart, Christ in His character, or moral features. This is to be supplemented and completed, when the Lord comes again, by the body of the saint being brought into conformity to Christ’s body of glory. The Lord Himself will do this, it is true (Phil. 3:21), but not apart from the Spirit of God, for God will “quicken your mortal bodies by His Spirit that dwelleth in you” (Rom. 8:11).
Of great importance, too, are all the Spirit’s operations in connection with the Church as distinguished from those that concern the individual believer. He is the true Vicar of Christ upon earth. He is the “Servant” who is commissioned not only to carry the gospel invitation but also to “compel them to come in,” according to the parable in Luke 15. He it is who gives those gifts to various members of Christ’s body which are to be for the profit of all. The gifts are varied, but “all these worketh that one and the self-same Spirit, dividing to every man severally as He will” (1 Cor. 12:11), and as chapter 14 of that Epistle shows, He is the One to preside and control in the assemblies of the saints. He is here not to exalt Himself but to magnify Christ, nevertheless He is to be honored and given His place as indwelling the saints who are God’s house. To ignore His presence in the assembly of God, or to treat Him as a nonentity there, by men (though well-meaning) usurping His place and functions, is a serious sin.
How vast a subject is that of the work and indwelling of the Spirit of God! We have but hastily and imperfectly sketched its outlines.
How may a believer know that he has received the Holy Spirit?
By the fact that he is a believer, assuming always, of course, that he has heard and believed the gospel of the risen Christ. The Ephesian believers were sealed with the Holy Spirit after that they believed, or “having believed” (see Eph. 1:13). This verse gives us definitely the order which is always observed. First, they “heard the word of truth the gospel of your salvation”; second, they believed it; third, they were sealed with the Spirit.
1. We have in the Acts the historic record of cases where the Spirit was received. Take, for example: The disciples in Jerusalem (Acts 2).
2. The Samaritans (Acts 8).
3. The Gentiles— Cornelius and his friends (Acts 10 and Acts 11).
4. The twelve men at Ephesus (Acts 19).
In each case there are differences as regards details, such as baptism, the laying on of hands, and speaking with tongues. There are good reasons for these differences on which we do not dwell, but evidently it is impossible in the face of them to formulate rules and say, for instance, that baptism must take place before the Spirit can be received— the third case negates that. On the other hand, beneath these surface differences there is the divine order of hearing, believing, and the sealing of the Spirit, verified in each case of the four. The fourth case emphasizes that what is heard and believed must be the full gospel of the death and resurrection of Christ. It was because the twelve men had not heard and believed this that they had not received the Spirit.
Ought there not, however, to be some very definite outward signs when the Spirit is received; something that makes so great a gift manifest to all?
There ought to be, and are, definite signs when the Spirit is received, but not necessarily of a sort to be noticed by sight or hearing. The fact that a new convert looks up to God as his Father is a sign that the Spirit is received (see Rom. 8:15). So also is the fact of the Bible becoming a new book to such (see 1 Cor. 2:11-14); and many other such things could be specified. These are far more important than such things as speaking with tongues.
True, the outward signs were much in evidence in apostolic times, inasmuch as then God was publicly accrediting the Church which He had just founded. Now that stage is over and it is these less sensational and more hidden and important things which abide. We may draw an analogy between this and the human body, the most important and vital organs of which are hidden away beneath the surface.
Take speaking with tongues just mentioned: some insist that unless this takes place the Spirit of God is not received. How does Scripture bear on this?
Quite effectively. What we have just pointed out bears on it. So also does the fact that in the six cases of the Spirit’s reception recorded in Acts, three make no mention at all of speaking with tongues. So also does the fact that speaking with tongues is much alluded to in 1 Corinthians 12, where the whole argument of the Apostle turns upon the point that though the Spirit of God is one, yet the gifts or manifestations which proceed from Him are many and various; and that to one member of the body was given one gift such as prophecy, to another member another gift such as speaking with tongues.
At the end of the chapter (vv. 29-30) a number of questions are raised. No answer is given because it is so obvious. “Are all apostles?” he asks. Clearly, No. “Are all prophets?” No. “Do all speak with tongues?” Just as clearly, No. Are all Christians members of Christ’s body by baptism of the Spirit? Yes. Do all the members speak with tongues? No. A clear scriptural refutation of this erroneous idea.
Does the believer receive the Holy Spirit in order that he may use His influence for God?
The Scriptures do not put it just in that way. The Spirit of God is a Person. He wields an incalculable influence. Yet it is as a Person He indwells.
Now whether we consider Him as indwelling the individual believer or the whole Church, as the house of God, we find Him supreme and sovereign in His actions. He is not given to us as a power or influence at our disposal, but rather that we may be at His disposal.
This comes clearly to light in the history of the Apostle Paul. He started on his missionary career because “The Holy Ghost said...” (Acts 13:2). Later, he was “forbidden of the Holy Ghost to preach the Word in Asia” and assaying to go into Bithynia, “the Spirit suffered them not” (Acts 16:6, 7).
What is it to be filled with the Spirit?
It is to be so fully under the control of the Spirit of God that He becomes the source of all the believer’s thoughts and actions, and also the energy in which they are carried into effect.
In the Acts of the Apostles we find that on special occasions one or another were filled with the Spirit (Acts 4:8, 31; Acts 7:55; Acts 13:9 and 52). He possessed them with especial completeness so that the emergency might be met in the full power of God.
Yet we find in Ephesians 5:18 the exhortation “be filled with the Spirit,” and this addressed to all saints in that city, so that evidently it is something that each saint should know and experience for himself and not something only attainable by the few.
If it be further asked, Why then is it so little known? the answer we fear is because with most of us the flesh is so often unjudged, and therefore active, that the energies of the Spirit are largely taken up in counteracting its power. Galatians 5:17 speaks of the Spirit and flesh as “contrary the one to the other,” and we are to walk in the Spirit and so “not fulfill the lust of the flesh.” The first step towards being filled with the Spirit is so to walk in the Spirit that the flesh is judged, and quiescent with the sentence of death upon it in a practical way.
What is it that “grieves” the Spirit of God, and what “quenches” Him?
What grieves Him is anything which dishonors Christ, or deviates from His control. The Scripture runs, “Grieve not the holy Spirit of God” (Eph. 4:30). He will therefore be grieved by anything unholy. Not grieved away, for the next words are: “whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption,” i.e. the day of the redemption of our bodies at the coming of the Lord.
To grieve Him is to lose the practical benefits of His presence, for He then turns His energies to grieving us into a recognition and confession of the evil that we may be restored to communion.
“Quench not the Spirit” (1 Thess. 5:19) is an exhortation not to hinder His action through the prophets or others in the assemblies of the saints. The next verse or two shows this. The Spirit indwelling the Church claims the right to order its gatherings and let not men under any pretext interfere with or quench His voice. This is an exhortation generally disregarded in Christendom where organizations and liturgies have been instituted in order to place everything under the control of a man or men. Under such circumstances the free and sovereign action of the Spirit would be resented as an intrusion and promptly suppressed.
What, in a word, is the great mission of the Spirit of God?
To glorify Christ. See John 16:14. In the preceding verse it is said, “He shall not speak of Himself,” that is, of His own initiative. He has taken the place of serving the interests of Christ and hence His activities are along that line and He has not come to make Himself the prominent feature. For this reason we do not find either prayer or worship in Scripture ever addressed distinctively to the Holy Spirit. He is rather the Inspirer of both in the believer.
This is important because some have taken up matters in such a way as to form a kind of “cult” of the Holy Spirit. He is talked about; His operations within the believer are analyzed and discussed and even systematized in people’s minds; the effect of all this being that such get hopelessly occupied with themselves, their own state, and the operations of the Spirit whether real or fancied within; and Christ is eclipsed.
Such self-occupation is a serious evil, and totally opposed to the real ministry of the Spirit. He is here in the Church to glorify Christ and lead our souls to Him.
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The Last Adam - The Second Man
At first sight the subject now before us may seem to belong rather to the superstructure of the faith than the foundations, but it is not so. It is truly fundamental, and this we shall see as we proceed.
Both the expressions which head this chapter are found in the course of the great argument on the resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15. If their force is to be grasped, verses 35-49 should be read.
The point raised in these verses is as to the body in which the risen saints will appear, and the Apostle shows that though there is identity preserved between the body which is buried and the body which is raised, yet in condition and character the risen body will be altogether new. As to condition, the former is marked by corruption, dishonor, and weakness; the latter by incorruption, glory, and power. As to character, the former is a natural body, the latter a spiritual body.
The next fact that confronts us is that just as there is a natural and a spiritual body so there is a natural and a spiritual race. “The first man Adam was made a living soul, the last Adam... a quickening spirit” (v. 45).
Adam is presented to us in Scripture as the original progenitor of the human race. He came fresh from God’s hand as recorded in Genesis 2:7, as to his body formed out of the dust, but receiving the spiritual part of his constitution by God’s in-breathing, and in this way becoming a living soul. This tripartite nature of man is clearly stated in 1 Thessalonians 5:23. What characterized Adam’s position in creation was, however, that he was a living soul a living soul, we may say, possessing spirit as well as body. The last Adam, who is none other than our Lord Jesus Christ, bears an infinitely higher character. He is “spirit” rather than “soul”; and not merely “living” but “quickening” or “life-giving.”
Here there breaks out upon us the true divine glory of the Lord Jesus. He is a Spirit so is God. He is life-giving because the Life-Giver. “Am I God to kill, and to make alive?” asked the distracted King of Israel (see 2 Kings 5:7). No, he was not; but Jesus was and is. But then He who is the life-giving Spirit is the last Adam, i.e., really and truly Man; the Head and Source of a new race of mankind, having stamped upon it the character of spiritual as definitely as the character natural is stamped upon the first Adam and his race.
Notice, too, that He is “the last Adam.” The contrast here is between the first and the last, not the first and the second. Why last? Evidently because that word excludes the idea that any third or subsequent race can ever be needed, or enter upon the scene. “He taketh away the first that He may establish the second,” is what Hebrews 10:9 says. He never takes away the second in favor of a third! The second is established. The last Adam abides without rival or successor, for perfection divine perfection and not merely human is reached in Him.
The forty-sixth verse of our chapter points out the historic order of the two Adams. First the natural, then the spiritual; though, of course, in importance and in the thoughts and purposes of God, the last was always first.
Verse 47 again speaks of the two heads, emphasizing the condition that marked them rather than their respective characters, as in verse 45. The one is “of the earth, earthy,” or as it may be translated, “out of the earth, made of dust.” The Other is “out of heaven.” In this verse they are termed “the first man” and “the second Man”; not this time “the first” and “the last.” Now why is it second? Because here, where Christ’s manhood rather than His headship is before us, the object of the Spirit of God is to exclude every other man. After the first Adam and until the last Adam historically appeared no man counted at all. The last Adam was the second man, and not Cain, as we might have supposed.
Who and what, then, was Cain? Simply Adam reproduced. Adam “begat... in his own likeness, after his image” (Gen. 5:3); “In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made He him” (Gen. 5:1). This likeness, alas, was marred by the Fall, and it was not until he was a fallen creature that Adam begat “in his own likeness.” He reproduced his fallen self both morally and physically. Hence from the point of view of this passage in 1 Corinthians 15 there was nothing but “the first man” until the appearance of Christ, who is the second. Adam was a marvelous and complex being, and every one of his millions of descendants during that time was an individual with characteristics, that showed on the surface, if we may so put it, some fresh permutation or combination of the many features which make up the Adamic nature; yet fundamentally all were one in both nature and character.
At this point we may perhaps appreciate more fully the immense importance of the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ was born of a virgin. There was a hint of this great fact in the first prediction concerning Him ever given. It was the Lord God Himself who spoke of “the woman” and “her seed” (Gen. 3:15). Hence, “when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman” (Gal. 4:4), yet conceived under the direct action of the Holy Ghost (Luke 1:35). Therefore it is that while the Deliverer was by the woman He was not an ordinary son of Adam at all. The virgin birth means that the Lord Jesus while truly Man was yet a Man of a new order.
Verse 48 turns to the two races, ranged respectively under the two heads; stating that the earthy race of the first man partakes of the character and position of Adam; the heavenly race of that of Christ. To understand rightly the race we must therefore rightly understand the head.
Verse 49 links on the truth of the preceding verses with the great theme of the chapter, i.e., resurrection, by showing that the identity between the last Adam and His race is to be complete even as to the physical body. We certainly have borne the image of Adam in our physical bodies. So certainly shall we bear the image of the last Adam, the heavenly Man. Our resurrection bodies will be fashioned in conformity with His body of glory.
The latter part of Romans 5, beginning at verse 12, should also be read. Here we find the spiritual results flowing from the characteristic actions of the two heads. Adam’s characteristic action was disobedience, whilst obedience even to the death of the cross characterized Christ. From Adam’s sin there flowed death and condemnation. From Christ’s obedience unto death flows life and justification. The main line of the Apostle’s argument runs straight from verse 12 to verse 18. Verses 13-17 are parenthetical, running like a loop line between the same two points and giving details which show that what is offered in Jesus Christ the risen Head of the new order cannot be confined to any section of humanity, such as Israel. It must be as universal as the calamity it is designed to overcome. Moreover, the blessings thus introduced are of a nature to meet, and more than meet, the penalties incurred by Adam’s fall.
Verses 18 and 19 are important as summing up the whole matter. One distinction which is not quite clear in our excellent Authorized Translation should be noted. We quote therefore from the New Translation of the late J. N. Darby. Verse 18 deals with “one offense towards all men to condemnation” and “one righteousness towards all men for justification of life.” Verse 19 states that “the many have been constituted sinners” and “the many will be constituted righteous.”
In these words we observe the same distinction as we have before seen when sins were in question in Romans 3:22. It is a question of sin— the nature— here, but again the bearing of Christ’s one righteousness, consummated in His death, is distinguished from its actual effect. Its bearing is towards all with justification as the objective, only here the justification is not contemplated as being from offenses, but rather as being “justification of life.” The former is, of course, perfect and absolute, but somewhat negative in its bearing, i.e., by it we lose both guilt and condemnation. The latter is more positive and indicates that full and perfect clearance which is the portion of every believer by virtue of his standing in the life and consequently nature of the risen Christ as Man. It might have pleased God to clear us from the guilt of our sins without cutting the old links with the fallen Adam and implanting us in the risen Christ. This further great favor is, however, ours as believers and consequently we are now “constituted righteous.” While we are in this world the old nature with its unchanged tendencies is still in us, as other scriptures show; but in this verse the Spirit of God is contemplating what we are in Christ as God sees us.
Romans 8:1 sums up this section of the epistle and reverts to the truth we have just considered. “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.” If it stated that in the Day of Judgment we believers should escape condemnation, that would be wonderful. What it does state, however, is that there is now no condemnation. The condemnation has been borne and exhausted as far as we are concerned, and we are now in the life of the risen Christ and as clear of condemnation therefore as He is.
A great many Christians, we fear, have never seriously considered this important side of truth. It deals with life and nature rather than with the overt acts in which life and nature express themselves, or, as we commonly say, with what we are rather than with what we have done, and hence it is not quite so easy of apprehension. Still, it really conducts us to that which is the secret of the profound blessedness which characterizes Christianity, and we are great losers if we ignore it.
What is the difference between “the first man” and “the old man?”
The first man, as the context in 1 Corinthians 15 shows, is Adam personally, if the expression be taken in its primary sense. There is, however, a secondary sense, as is clear from the fact that we do not meet with the second man until Christ appears. How then shall we designate the millions of humanity that came between? They were all “first man” in character; so that in a secondary sense “the first man” covers Adam and his race.
The “old man,” on the other hand, is a purely abstract conception. It does not indicate any particular human being or group of human beings, but rather is the personification of all those moral features which characterize fallen Adam and his race. It is the fallen Adamic character personified.
“In Christ” is a phrase often met with in Paul’s Epistles. What, in a few words, is its significance?
As 1 Corinthians 15:22 shows, it is an expression in contrast with “in Adam.” We are all “in Adam” by nature, i.e., we originate from him and stand before God in exactly his nature, position, and status. The believer is “in Christ” by grace, inasmuch as we owe our real and spiritual existence to His quickening action as the last Adam. We therefore stand before God in exactly the nature, position, and status of the risen Christ, as Man.
We might use the process of grafting as an illustration, if at liberty to exactly reverse what is actually carried out by the gardener. He grafts the good into the worthless, whereby the worthless is condemned, and the good dominates and characterizes the tree. In Romans 11 grafting is used as an illustration of God’s dispensational dealings with Jews and Gentiles, and the Apostle points out in verse 24 that he uses the figure in a way “contrary to nature” by supposing the wild olive branch grafted into the good olive tree and thereby partaking of the virtues of the good. This is the adaptation of the process we want for our illustration. The Christian is one disconnected from the “Adam” stock by God’s work and grafted into Christ, partaking of His fullness. He is “in Christ,” though the flesh is still in him.
Does “in Christ” then only refer to the believer’s new position or status before God?
If the early part of Romans 8 be read we find that verse 1 gives us “in Christ,” but this is followed in verses 8 and 9 by: “So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God. But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you.”
Now “in the Spirit” is as clearly contrasted with “in the flesh” as “in Christ” is with “in Adam,” and it indicates the new condition or state which corresponds to the position in Christ.
Now these two things, though distinct and distinguished thus in Scripture, are not to be disconnected. There is no such thought as a person being in Christ and not “in Spirit,” nor vice versa. They are two parts of one whole. Speaking generally, we may say, then, that the expression “in Christ” often covers the fact of our new state as “in Spirit”; yet if we come to a closer analysis, as in Romans 8:1-9, it does mainly refer to the believer’s new position rather than his new condition.
Has all this anything to do with that “new creation” of which Scripture speaks?
It certainly has. It says, “if any man be in Christ he is a new creature” or “there is a new creation” (2 Cor. 5:17).
New creation clearly does not mean the destruction of personality or identity. If that reversed form of grafting— “contrary to nature” — of which Romans 11 speaks could be carried out in nature we should see the once wild olive bearing good fruit, and generally behaving as the cultivated stock. It would indeed be new created, yet the identity of the engrafted twig would remain.
Still, it is creation: as positive a work of God as the creation of Genesis 1. As Ephesians 2:10 says, “We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus, unto good works...” To be God’s workmanship is a wonderful thing.
The first man is evidently superseded by the second Man. When did this take place?
If we consider things from the standpoint of God’s purpose, He never had any but the Second before Him. We never were chosen in Adam in any sense whatever. God has “chosen us in Him [Christ] before the foundation of the world” (Eph. 1:4).
If, however, we consider things from our standpoint, we may say that the true character of the first man was fully revealed at the cross. There he was judged, and at the same moment the perfection of the second Man also came fully to light and He was glorified (see John 13:31). Historically, therefore, the cross was the supreme moment. The first was judged and superseded by the Second, who was tested to the uttermost and raised from the dead.
In the new heaven and new earth of Revelation 21:1-7 new creation will characterize the whole scene. “Behold I make all things new” is the word. The supersession of the first by the second will then be absolute and complete.
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Fatherhood and Sonship
One serious effect of sin entering the world was that mankind lost the true knowledge of God. Once lost, that highest and best of all knowledge could not be regained by any effort of man’s will or intellect. “Canst thou by searching find out God?” (Job 11:7), was the question of Zophar, whilst in a previous chapter Job confessed his inability in that direction, saying, “Lo, He goeth by me, and I see Him not: He passeth on also, but I perceive Him not” (Job 9:11). Since, therefore, we cannot discover God, it is needful that He should make Himself known to us. Revelation becomes a necessity; and the crowning point of that revelation of Himself was touched when in Christ He made Himself known as Father.
1. It is quite clear that sin having entered, mankind did not lose the knowledge of God all at once. For evidence of this Romans 1:18-32 may be read. The Apostle Paul here draws a lurid picture of the state of the heathen world. Incidentally it reveals three things: That all, even the most degraded heathen peoples, once had the knowledge of God. It speaks of “when they knew God” (v. 21).
2. That not glorifying Him as God they gradually lost all true knowledge of Him. They “became vain in their imaginations,” “their foolish heart was darkened,” and so they “changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things” (v. 23).
3. That all this process took place because “they did not like to retain God in their knowledge” (v. 28). They were glad to forget Him.
This indictment shows that man’s departure from God was in the first instance deliberate. It then became debasing and issued in gross sins that were disgusting.
Just when this darkness reached a climax subsequent to the tower of Babel, God commenced to work in the way of revealing Himself. We do not forget, of course, that some knowledge of Himself remained with chosen individuals all through, both before and after the flood, but with the call of Abram the epoch of revelation began. To him at the start the God of glory appeared, and later “when Abram was ninety years old and nine the Lord appeared to Abram, and said unto him, I am the Almighty God; walk before Me and be thou perfect” (Gen. 17:1).
The Almighty power of God came out in the birth of Isaac, which was a humanly impossible thing; When at the announcement of his birth Sarah laughed incredulously, the Lord said, “Is anything too hard for the Lord?” (Gen. 18:14). Can a living child be produced from parents as good as dead? Here clearly was involved the supreme test. Can life be brought out of death? It was brought out. Isaac was born. God is the almighty.
Four hundred years later God called the nation that sprang from Isaac out of Egypt. In so doing He revealed Himself in a fresh light. To Moses He said, “I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of God Almighty, but by my name Jehovah was I not known to them” (Ex. 6:3). Notice the exact wording here. He did not say, “They did not know My name Jehovah.” Abraham knew the name Jehovah, for in Genesis we find him using it. He did not, however, know God by that name; that is, the real meaning and import of the name Jehovah never dawned upon him, inasmuch as the circumstances which demanded such a revelation had not arisen. But now the moment had come for it to be unfolded, and the Almighty One stood forth, pledged in connection with Israel, as the I AM the self-existent and therefore unchanging One, always true and faithful to His word. This was abundantly verified in Israel’s history. At the end of the Old Testament God said, “I am the LORD [i.e., Jehovah]. I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed” (Mal. 3:6).
The full revelation of God, however, awaited the coming of the Lord Jesus. The utmost that was possible even for so great a man as Moses was to see “the back parts” of Jehovah (Ex. 33:23). Certain of the divine attributes were emphasized such as His mercy and long-suffering; the full-orbed revelation of Himself was only possible in the only-begotten Son who was God and became Man. “No man hath seen God at any time; the only-begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him” (John 1:18).
To Moses it was said, “Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see Me, and live” (Ex. 33:20). Yet is it possible for the Christian to say, “God... hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6). Man can much less look upon God in His essence and uncreated glory than he can calmly fix his gaze upon the sun in noonday splendor, yet the believer today can contemplate all that God is as revealed in Jesus. Not one ray is absent, yet they all shine with a peculiar softness which brings them within the range of creatures such as ourselves. Redemption, of course, was necessary in order that we might stand unabashed before such a revelation. But then, He who was the Revealer was also the Redeemer.
Now the great name which characterizes the revelation of God in Christ is father. When near, or in, the Garden of Gethsemane the Lord Jesus lifted up His eyes to heaven and uttered the wonderful prayer recorded in John 17: He said, “Father... I have manifested Thy name unto the men which Thou gavest Me out of the world” (v. 6). We do well then reverently to inquire: What does the name of Father mean?
To begin with, it clearly means relationship. The knowledge of God as Almighty or as Jehovah did not involve this, which doubtless accounts for the way in which unconverted people use, such a term as “Almighty God” in speaking of Him and instinctively avoid “Father.” In their case the relationship does not exist.
Further, it means relationship of the closest kind. The correlative terms to Father are “children” and “sons,” and both these are used in the New Testament of Christians. The closeness of the relationship is further emphasized by the fact that it is real and vital and not something merely assumed. We are children of God inasmuch as we are born of God (John 1:12-13; 1 John 3:9-10).
But the crowning point in the revelation of God as Father lies in the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ Himself as incarnate is the Son. He was ever “the Son” in the unity of the Godhead, but we refer to the place He took in Manhood here (see Luke 1:35; Gal. 4:4). Hence in His advent there was the full setting forth of all that God is as Father in connection with all that He Himself is as Son; and the light in which we know God is as “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Eph. 1:3).
Much depends upon this, and we urge the reader to ponder it prayerfully until he makes it his own. Our tendency is to connect God’s Fatherhood merely with ourselves, with the result that we lower it until it becomes to our minds just a matter of the fatherly care that gives us food and raiment and the mercies of this life. All these things are indeed ours from our Father’s hand, but the Father’s thoughts and the Father’s love soar infinitely beyond them.
Connect God’s Fatherhood with Christ the Son— who is the worthy Object of His love, and in whom a perfect response is given— and at once you have the key that opens the subject in its fullness. That is the standard! There you see the revelation in its perfection!
We are indeed sons of God with “the Spirit of His Son” in our hearts “crying Abba, Father”; but sonship is only ours as the fruit of God’s Son being revealed and redemption accomplished (see Gal. 4:4-6). Only thus was that wonderful message made possible. “I ascend unto My Father, and your Father; and to My God, and your God” (John 20:17).
“Sonship,” then, is the word which most fully expresses the nearness and dignity of the place of blessing which is occupied by the saint of today. The word does not actually occur in the Authorized version since the translators preferred to paraphrase it as “the adoption of sons” in Galatians 4:5, and similarly in other places. The whole passage, Galatians 3:21-4:7, should be read, when the Apostle’s argument will be seen to be that the coming of Christ has inaugurated a new epoch. Before He came the law, with its partial revelation of God, held sway, and believers then were like minors in a family, under a schoolmaster. Having come, and consequently redemption having been accomplished, we are like children come of age, emancipated from the nursery regime and in the full liberty of the Father’s house. “Wherefore,” says the Apostle, “thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ” (Gal. 4:7).
Our place with God is in exact correspondence with the light in which He has been pleased to reveal Himself to us. But both the brightness of the revelation and the standard and pattern of the place, are found in Christ.
No teaching is more popular today than that of “the universal Fatherhood of God.” What truth is there in it?
None at all, as the doctrine is popularly presented.
The Scriptures clearly reveal “the universal Creatorship of God,” and if this were what is meant when God’s Fatherhood is spoken of there would be little to take exception to. But this is not the case, for the theory is that Christ, by assuming Manhood, has lifted up mankind into this relationship with God, or at least that He brought to light the relationship that existed between God and the human race. In any case it means that Christ is but the finest specimen of the race of Adam and that the race as such is acknowledged and owned of God; whereas the truth is that Christ is the second Man and also the last Adam the Head of a new race which is of His order or kind and that those of His race are in relationship with God, and no others.
God is the “Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Eph. 1:3) and consequently the Father of those who are in Him. Again John 1:12 tells us that “as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God”; and those who received Him are described, not as everybody, but as those who “believe on His name” and who are “born of God.”
Further, the Jews claimed a kind of “universal Fatherhood of God” in the presence of our Lord, saying, “We have one Father, even God.” His answer was, “If God were your Father...” A big if that! He even went further and said, “Ye are of your father the devil... When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it” (John 8:41-44), thus branding their true origin upon them and the doctrine they represented.
Clear, cutting language this! The universal-Fatherhood-of-God idea is, in fact, a lie fathered by Satan.
What, then, about the universal brotherhood of men?
This idea springs out of the one we have just dealt with, and is a corollary to it. It also has some truth in a creatorial sense inasmuch as God has “made of one blood all nations of men” (Acts 17:20). It is not true in any other sense. The Scriptures draw the most distinct line imaginable between the believer and the man of the world. In his first epistle, 1 John 3 and 1 John 4, the Apostle John has much to say to the Christian as to his brother. And who is the brother in question? Any other child of Adam? No, any other child of God; anyone who is “born of God.” John, indeed, wields his pen in the clear and cutting style of his great Master and speaks of “the children of the devil” in contrast to “the children of God” (1 John 3:10).
A universal cousinship, in very attenuated degree, exists amongst men. The only true Christian brotherhood is that which exists amongst Christians as born of God.
We are sometimes said to be the adopted children of God. Is this correct?
It is, thank God, not correct. If we were just adopted into God’s family there would lie no more vital connection between God and ourselves than exists between the director and some homeless child when the latter is happily sheltered in the benevolent institutions founded by the late Dr. Barnardo. The believer is born of God and thus there is a most vital connection.
The believer is not only a child of God by being born of God, but is also a son. This speaks of position and dignity, and therefore in Romans 8:23 we are said to be “waiting for the adoption [literally— sonship], to wit, the redemption of our body,” inasmuch as our full entrance upon the dignity which that glorious position entails is yet future, and will take place when our bodies are redeemed at the coming of the Lord.
The word “adoption” occurs in our English Bible, but in every case it is a translation of the Greek word meaning “sonship” or “placing as a son.”
Also our excellent Authorized Version does not clearly distinguish between the two terms “son” and “child.” A good concordance will show that in John’s writings he always speaks of us as children of God and not sons; and he it is who so frequently alludes to the fact that we are born of God; whilst in Galatians we are always spoken of as “sons.”
If God was not fully revealed until Christ came, would that not involve a certain inferiority in Old Testament believers?
In one way it would. Galatians 3:21-4:7, as we have already remarked, contrasts the position of the Old Testament believer with the New Testament saint. The former—a child under age, “shut up” with no real liberty or access to the Father, but kept under the law as a schoolmaster, and this condition persisted “unto Christ”; that is, till Christ came and accomplished redemption. The latter—a son of full age in the liberty of the Father’s home.
It did not, however, mean any inferiority in these Old Testament saints as to what one may call their spiritual caliber. The fact that they could know but a little of God in their day makes the clearness and strength of their faith in what they did know only the more remarkable. They had great faith in a partial revelation; we, alas! often have little faith in a full revelation.
Is the revelation of God in Christ something which has taken place once for all?
It is. The revelation is complete and absolute. The Lord Jesus could say, “He that hath seen Me, hath seen the Father” (John 14:9). He is “the image of the invisible God” (Col. 1:15). God spoke in time past by the prophets, but now He has spoken to us, not by or through anyone, but “in His Son” (Heb. 1:2, R.V.) He Himself without intermediary spoke to us in that character, for the Son was and is God equally with the Father. Hence there is nothing more to be said. God is fully “in the light” (1 John 1:7) and finality is reached.
This does not mean that there was no further unfolding of God’s mind and purpose subsequent to the Lord’s own ministry, for He Himself promised that there should be when the Holy Ghost was come (see John 16:12-15); and this promised ministry was carried out through the apostles and preserved for us in the epistles.
Nor does it mean that the Lord Himself revealed everything as to the Father at once. The way He spoke of the Father to His disciples just before leaving them as recorded in John 13-16, and in His prayer of John 17, is manifestly far in advance of anything He said in such a discourse as that recorded in Matthew 5-7. In the Sermon on the Mount it was the making known of the Father in heaven who has a loving interest in His people on earth, whereas in John it is the Father in His own love and purposes that is presented to us and the lifting of His disciples’ hearts into communion with the Father in His own circumstances. In the Sermon on the Mount the Father stoops to our humble little cottage on earth. In the sermon in the upper chamber we are lifted to the Father’s palace above.
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The Believer's Present Position on Earth, and Christ's Present Service in Heaven
As believers, we are redeemed to God, and a day is coming when redemption in its full power will be applied to our bodies, which will mean our full entrance into the glorious estate which is ours in Christ. Meanwhile for a longer or shorter time we live on in the world. Externally nothing was changed in the hour of our conversion. That great revolution was internal, yet profoundly effective. It has put us in altogether new relations with God. How has it altered our position here?
Mankind is dominated by a triple alliance of evil the world, the flesh, and the devil. The first is that organized system of things produced as the fruit of human thought and activity, without God and in opposition to Him.
The second is that corrupt nature, inherent in man as a fallen creature, which finds expression in the world, and is quite at home there.
The last is the mighty personage, the very source and originator of evil itself. The world as an elaborate system has been built up by men, but unknown to them the inspiring genius of its developments has been the devil, and he controls the machine thus created. He is the god and prince of this world (see 2 Cor. 4:4; John 12:31).
From all three the death of Christ is our deliverance a— deliverance to be experimentally enjoyed even now in the power of the Spirit of God. As delivered we are set up here in witness for our absent Lord, and against these evil powers which formerly held us in bondage.
Let us consider a few scriptures that deal with this important part of the truth; and first of all as to the devil.
As the god of this world he has “blinded the minds of them which believe not lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ... should shine unto them,” but the apostle immediately adds, “God... hath shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor. 4:4-6). The believer is, therefore, one who is no longer kept under the blinding influence of Satan. God has, in his case, broken through the devil’s line of dark defense and let the light in.
Consequently ours is the happy privilege of “giving thanks to the Father... who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of His dear son” (Col. 1:12-13). Notice that this deliverance is stated as an act of God and not something realized progressively in our experience. It is as much an act of God as was that great deliverance wrought when God overthrew Pharaoh and his hosts at the Red Sea, bringing Israel into the light of the Pillar of His presence, and the further light of the triumphant morning on the eastern banks, when Moses and all Israel sang their thanks to Jehovah out of full hearts. Indeed this latter is the type in the material realm. The former is the far greater reality in the spiritual realm. We have been called “out of darkness into His marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9).
We English-speaking Christians but feebly realize the triumphant ring of these words. What must it have been to the eunuch of Ethiopia (Acts 8), or the jailer of Philippi (Acts 16), or Dionysius the Areopagite (Acts 17), to step out of the dark unfathomed caves of pagan superstition and vice, whether rough and barbaric or polished and intellectual, into the clear sunlight of the gospel!
Next the world. Here too the line of demarcation is clearly and sharply drawn. The Lord Jesus Christ “gave Himself for our sins, that He might deliver us from this present evil world” (Gal. 1:4). Hence anticipating the cross He prayed for His disciples, saying, “They are not of the world even as I am not of the world” (John 17:16), and consequently we are enjoined, “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world” (1 John 2:15). By the cross the world is crucified to the believer, and the believer to the world (see Gal. 6:14).
Lastly, as to the flesh. This too is a condemned thing. It is utterly worthless, inasmuch as no good is found in it (see Rom. 7:18). “Sin in the flesh” is “condemned” (Rom. 8:3), and consequently “they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts” (Gal. 5:24). This last scripture shows that it is not contemplated that any are brought into allegiance to Christ, and so belong to Him, without their having themselves solemnly endorsed and verified the sentence executed against it at the cross. For the believer, as well as for God, the flesh is a worthless thing and he condemns and repudiates it in its practical workings. This is possible, of course, by reason of the fact that we have a new nature and possess the Spirit of God.
The bare recital of these great facts will prepare us for that which Scripture indicates as our present position on earth. The flesh being held as a crucified thing we are set in sharpest conflict with the powers of darkness (see Eph. 6), and we are severed from the world; so totally are we severed that if we do practically come into alliance with it we are addressed as “adulterers and adulteresses” and told that “the friendship of the world is enmity with God; whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God” (James 4:4).
In the light of this Scripture we are safe in saying that no true Christian deliberately and of set purpose stands forth as an enemy of God and a friend of the world; but, on the other hand, there is grave danger for every Christian, even the most devoted, lest they should be allured by the world in one of its many fairer forms, and thus, deceived and decoyed, fall under its power. The man of God from Judah, you may remember, had not much difficulty in declining the proffered hand of friendship, extended by Jeroboam, for that hand was stained by idolatry and open rebellion against God. He fell an easy victim though to the wily old prophet of Bethel. His words were smooth and religious. His proffered hand was professedly pious and guided by an angel of Jehovah— “but he lied unto him.” The man of God struck up an alliance and fell (see 1 Kings 13). That is our danger.
What, then, is our business in the world? Why are we here? In order that we may be for Christ just as once He was here for God. His place and position in the world is just the pattern of ours. His own words were: “As Thou hast sent Me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world” (John 17:18). Here He clearly views us as taken out of the world and sent back into it to be for Him.
Did he appear as a great Social Reformer? He did not. On the one occasion when He was appealed to, and urged to interfere because of social and pecuniary inequality, He flatly refused to have anything to do with it (see Luke 12:13-15). Neither are we left here to be social reformers.
Did He bear witness for God? Indeed He did. He came and spoke to men; He did “among them the works which none other man did;” He bore “witness unto the truth” (John 15:22, 24, and John 18:37). We, too, should be witnesses to truth by word and by work.
Was He sharply antagonized and hated? He was: and that to such an extent that the scripture was fulfilled which said, “They hated Me without a cause” (John 15:25). We too are warned by His lips, “Because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you” (John 15:19).
Again we say— His position here is ours. We stand out, severed from the world system, and delivered from satanic authority. The powers of darkness are against us. We need the whole armor of God to stand in the defensive attitude against these unseen forces of evil. And if grace is ours to take the offensive in the service of the Lord, we must still remember that “the weapons of our warfare are not carnal” (2 Cor. 10:4-5). The “strongholds” may be in human hearts; the “imaginations” or “reasonings” may be in human heads; but the pride that exalts itself against the knowledge of God is satanic in its origin and we are confronted with that.
If here our subject ended we should be left in a panic-stricken frame of mind, similar to that of the ten spies who felt themselves but grasshoppers in the presence of the giants. It does not end here, however. Just as Israel, fighting Amalek under Joshua in the valleys below, had Moses interceding effectually on the top of the hill (see Ex. 17:8-13) so we are left in the conflict with not only the Spirit of God to indwell us but with Christ’s continuous present service in heaven to sustain us. The Spirit of God does indeed help our infirmities and make intercession for us according to Romans 8:26, but verse 34 tells us that the Christ who died and rose again “is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.” In the succeeding verses all the adverse forces are surveyed. Not only those which proceed from men, such as persecution and the sword, but also the far more terrible principalities and powers of darkness. Yet in the face of them all the Apostle triumphantly asks, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” We may sum up his answer by replying, No one! Nothing! Never!
When we come to examine more closely this present service of Christ we find that it falls into two main divisions.
The first is that of His priesthood, which is so largely developed in the Epistle to the Hebrews, in keeping with its great theme of approach to God. Our approach is based on the blood, but it is by the Priest (see Heb. 10:19-22). In order, however, that He may thus serve, much priestly work of another kind is His. He concerns Himself with the “infirmities” of His saints (Heb. 4:15), and in view of these infirmities He proves Himself “able to succor” (Heb. 2:18), able to sympathize (see Heb. 4:15), and “able... to save... to the uttermost” (Heb. 7:25).
The second is that of His advocacy. Scripture says, “If any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous” (1 John 2:1). As is well known, the word here translated “Advocate” is translated “Comforter” in John 14; 15, and 16; the fact being that we have the Spirit of God here below as Comforter (or Advocate), and Christ above with the Father as Advocate (or Comforter).
As Advocate He charges Himself with our concerns, and especially acts in relation to our sins. He leads us to repentance concerning them, so that we confess them to God according to 1 John 1:9; He also is there before the Father on our behalf as the One who has accomplished propitiation, and thus, repentance and confession having taken place, the communion that had been disturbed by the sin is reestablished.
Bear in mind, then, the following distinctions: As Priest He deals with and counteracts the infirmities of His saints that He may lead them in their approach to God; as Advocate, He deals with the sins of His saints.
As Priest, He acts that we may not fall in spite of our infirmities; as Advocate, He lifts us up when fallen.
His Priesthood, in a word, has as its first object, prevention. His advocacy has as its object, cure.
In Christ’s present ministry on high we have thus a perfect provision for our sojourn in weakness below. We are truly in the enemy’s land and in the presence of his power; yet we may be maintained in the conflict against our foes, because sustained in our approach and nearness to God by the priestly action of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Should the Christian be silent in the presence of earth’s great wrongs? Ought he not to strive to put the world right?
It is hardly conceivable that the Christian should be silent and thus condone the wrongs. The point, however, is this: when he opens his mouth against them, what is his object in doing so?
Have Christians been commissioned by God to set the world right? Are they set as kings upon God’s holy hill of Zion to dispense judgment and justice in the earth? They are not. But a day is coming in which Christ will be, according to Psa. 2 and 72, and other scriptures. The putting of the world right will be quickly accomplished by Him at His second coming.
The prophets of old and the apostles of the New Testament were not silent as to the enormity of men’s sins. But they made more of men’s sins against God than of a man’s sins against his neighbor, and they charged home those sins on men’s consciences with the object of bringing them to repentance and thus into right relations with God.
If as the result of men getting right with God they altered their ways and so abuses were reformed it was indeed well. This, however, is a secondary consequence, and not the primary object of the Christian’s witness.
There can be no harm in the believer doing all he can to improve things, can there? Many useful societies exist, and he can help on their good work.
If a believer allows himself to be side-tracked from the main line of God’s purpose for us, there is very great harm indeed.
Here is an earnest child of God most zealously laboring at work God never allotted to him, a work indeed so utterly beyond his powers that it has been reserved for accomplishment by the mighty Son of God when He comes in glory with ten thousands of His saints. Is there no harm? There is in fact a double harm. First, the waste of energy in the pursuit of what is not God’s present program. Secondly, the neglect of what is.
The Church, composed of all God’s saints, is on earth as a fortress in the enemy’s land, or, to change the figure, is like an embassy in a foreign country. Are the officials of the British Embassy in Paris— from the ambassador downwards— in that city in order to improve French life? Do they conduct an agitation, or join clubs for political reform? They do not. They are there to look after the interests of their own King and country, and to rightly represent those interests in the eyes of the French people. To interfere with French affairs would be really an insult to the French people.
We Christians, being heaven’s embassage, are concerned with Christ’s interests. We represent Him. We do not meddle with world interests as though we were natives in the world system, and not foreigners.
You would surely advocate that as we go through the world we should do all the good we can?
Certainly. The crux of the matter lies, however, in the question— and what good can we do?
A ship, let us suppose, is grounded on the Goodwin Sands in a gale and the seas are breaking her up. The sailors are already on the masts. The lifeboat draws near. The coxswain skillfully brings it alongside the doomed vessel. See! instead of removing the sailors by rope from the battered ship into the security of the lifeboat, the majority of the lifeboat men spring on to the wreck, hammer in hand, and with a bag full of heavy nails slung on their backs. They attempt with feverish energy to undo the sea’s ravages and nail up her shattered planks. The coxswain protests, but they have an answer ready. Are they not doing all the good they can to the imperiled ship?
Possibly they are. But they have forsaken their true calling. They are lifeboat men and not ship’s carpenters. Moreover, their puny efforts fail. Their nails are no match for the raging sea. Their work is destroyed, and the sailors, who might have been saved, are drowned.
Need we apply our parable? Do all the good you can: but what good can you do?
What, then is the object of the service and activities of the Christian?
To save people out of the world, as the parable just used would indicate.
We cannot too earnestly press this point. Thousands of dear Christians are busy tinkering with the growing defects of the world system. The oncoming tide of lawlessness and apostasy will submerge all their efforts, and meanwhile they are diverted from what they could accomplish, under God, i.e., the saving of souls out of the world system.
The mischief, however, does not end here. By these well-meant efforts they are themselves entangled to a considerable extent in the world-system; instead of taking their stand with Paul and saying, “The world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world” (Gal. 6:14).
When Lot “sat in the gate of Sodom” (Gen. 19:1), which means that he acted as a magistrate, he, being a righteous man, must have earnestly desired to assist in improving its fearful state of unrighteousness and immorality. He accomplished nothing save the wrecking of his own power to witness against it and the destruction of his family. “He seemed as one that mocked unto his sons-in-law” (v. 14). He himself barely escaped at the last moment, without any power to deliver others. His very wife was lost, and though the angels did extricate his two unmarried daughters, they promptly involved their backslidden father in drunkenness and immorality the very sins of Sodom itself.
What a story! How great the warning for us! Let us take heed to it.
We naturally shrink from conflict. If we take up our true position is it inevitable?
Quite inevitable. We must make up our minds for it. Having unfolded to His disciples their true place on earth as His witnesses in John 15 and 16, the Lord closed with these words: “In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).
Tribulation, then, in one way or another, we shall have. We shall also have the mighty power of the risen Lord on our side. “All power,” said He, “is given unto Me in heaven and on earth. Go ye therefore... and lo, I am with you alway even unto the end of the world” (Matt. 28:18-20).
If we deviate from His path, if we change His program and ally ourselves with the world, can we expect to realize His power? No. The more truly we are obedient to His word and way the more that power will be at our disposal. He wields “all power,” and that in both spheres: heaven, the seat of those evil powers which are against us; and earth, where they operate and where we are.
In Ephesians 6:12 the devil and his hosts are called “the rulers of the darkness of this world” — the Greek word for ruler being kosmokrator, or literally, “world ruler,” i.e., they are the rulers of this cosmos— this ordered world system. But in 2 Corinthians 6:18 God speaks of Himself as “the Almighty,” the Greek word being pantokrator, i.e. the ruler of the “all things” — the “universe” — and not merely this little “cosmos” in which we move and suffer.
Do we tremble in the presence of the mighty invisible rulers of the cosmos? Above them towers the Almighty— the Ruler of the universe. He is for us. The keys of His power are in the hands of Jesus. We may well be of good cheer.
How best may a Christian keep himself unspotted from the world?
By keeping much in touch with the Lord in heaven. The negative is secured in the strength of the positive. The greater includes the less.
The Christian is like a diver. He finds himself in an element utterly foreign to him. Why does a man don a diving dress if he wishes to spend half an hour at the bottom of the sea? Because he knows two things are necessary. Negatively the water must be kept out. Positively the air must be let in. Therefore he encases himself in an airtight garment and sees to it that he has uninterrupted communication with the boundless expanse of air above. But if airtight then necessarily watertight. In securing the positive air supply the water is necessarily excluded.
If someone points out that after all the diver cannot keep up his own air supplies but is absolutely dependent upon a helper faithfully pumping down the air from above, we reply by affirming that this but increases the applicability of the illustration. There is, thank God, the one at the top, both Advocate and Priest, and His faithful services never fail.
But, then, like a diver, we are in the death element of this world but for a time, and our business is not the cleaning up of the sea or its bottom, but the extrication from its depths of the pearls that our Master values.
The copyright for this material is assigned to Scripture Truth Publications. Used by permission.
The Second Advent: The Day of Redemption
The Bible is so full of references to the second coming of the Lord Jesus that we shall waste no words in proving it, but rather take it for granted. It can only be denied at the cost of such a treatment of Scripture as would destroy all certainty in regard to every truth of our holy faith.
Our present object is to show the place it holds as ushering in the “day of redemption”; and how thus it completes the great foundations of revelation according to Scripture, and gives consistency and stability to the whole.
The first advent, together with the work of atonement which it involved, has for nineteen centuries been an accomplished fact. Then was brought to pass redemption by blood. Yet throughout all the years, and still today, is there ample scope for those who would speak injuriously of God and His ways. The love of God fully shone forth at the cross and the anointed eye perceives it; nevertheless, the powers of darkness still dominate the earth, and sin still ravages it. Hence the creation groans; the children of God continue in affliction; the mystery of God’s ways in His government of the earth persists; and men are found who blaspheme His holy name.
All this shall shortly be ended. God’s judgments will swiftly work for the disentanglement of good from evil, and for the vindication of all that is good, in the condemnation of all that is evil. Then the “mystery of God” shall be “finished” (Rev. 10:7) and “songs and everlasting joy” will supplant the “sorrow and sighing” (see Isa. 35:10). The Second Advent will bring to pass redemption by power.
The Old Testament prophets have much to tell us of the glories of this coming day. They indicate not only its character, both in the way of judgment and blessing, but also that it depends altogether upon the advent of the Messiah. When first they spoke, however, it would have been well-nigh impossible to determine how much of their utterances related to the first advent, and how much to the second. Theirs was a long distance view, and both merged indistinctly one into the other; just as there are many distant stars which to the naked eye shine as a single point of light, and no one suspected them to be anything but one until powerful telescopes were turned upon them. Then at once they were discovered to be twin or double stars.
The New Testament has furnished us with telescopic powers and we can clearly see that Messiah’s advent is like a double star. Astronomers assure us that though these stars are apparently one to the naked eye yet often immense distances lie between them, and for all that they revolve mutually round each other. Even so the two advents are mutually related, pivoted one upon the other, though we now know that at least nearly two thousand years roll between them.
One of the most striking New Testament passages upon this subject is Romans 8:16-25. Give it a careful reading.
The earlier part of this epistle has dwelt exhaustively upon the wonderful results of the work accomplished by the Lord Jesus Christ at His first coming. The “redemption that is in Christ Jesus” is expounded in all its bearings upon the individual believer. It has resulted in his complete Spiritual emancipation, so that he stands in the unclouded favor of God as a justified man; he is animated by the brightest hopes of glory; and, further, he is liberated from sin’s dominion though sin itself is still in him. He possesses the Spirit of God, and consequently he not only is a child of God, but he knows that he is. He has the consciousness of the relationship.
At this point the passage we have indicated starts. The Spirit-led children of God, who are also “heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ,” are still in a suffering condition. They are not yet physically emancipated. Their bodies truly are the Lord’s, being even “members of Christ,” and “temples of the Holy Ghost,” because “bought with a price” (see 1 Cor. 6:13-20), still they are not yet redeemed.
Verses 19-22 of our passage show us that the whole earthly creation lies under thralldom. The usurper still holds sway; the ravages of sin and death continue. Its decayed estate did not come upon it by some act of its own, or by some weakness or evil inherent in matter, as some would teach; but by reason of Adam’s will exercised in defiance of God. Adam was its constituted head, its intelligent link with the Creator. Just as the snapping of the first, or top link of a chain involves every link in its fall, so the fall of Adam brought about the fall of all creation. Is the creation, dumb and inanimate as it may appear to us, to groan and travail on forever?
No, indeed! In these verses creation is pictured as peering into the future with “earnest expectation,” or “anxious looking-out,” to a day when it shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption.
And when shall its hopes be fulfilled? We answer, When the sons of God are manifested. When the children of God step into their glory, then into the liberty of that glory the whole creation will step with them. Then there will be the proclamation of “liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.” Then will the forfeited land be redeemed. Then will men’s toil and labor cease and they will “eat the increase thereof out of the field” (see Lev. 25:10-13). It will be the true and final year of Jubilee.
But not only does creation groan; we who possess the Spirit groan also. We wait for that which will complete our glorious estate as the sons of God, i.e., “the redemption of our body.”
When and how will this redemption of our bodies take place? Have we any clear light as to it? The answer is supplied by 1 Corinthians 15:51-54. Our bodies will be redeemed when the Lord comes, whether it takes the form of a resurrection from amongst the dead into an incorruptible condition, or an instantaneous transformation of the living into a similar condition, when “we shall all be changed.” “In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump” all will be accomplished. “They that are Christ’s” will rise “at His coming” (v. 23).
In regard to ourselves, then, the Second Advent will witness the full completion of redemption’s work. Our very bodies will be brought under its power. We may note in passing how clearly this negates the idea, so prevalent today, that only a select few of superior faithfulness are to be taken when the Lord comes. He comes to redeem the bodies of His saints, and redemption is never a question of human faithfulness, but of the power and grace of God. We have been sealed with the Holy Spirit of God “unto the day of redemption” (Eph. 4:30). Every true believer is thus sealed with the great day in view. Our faithfulness, or the reverse, will mightily affect our place in the coming kingdom, but redemption lies on another plane altogether.
Thus far we have dwelt upon what we get, and what creation gets in a subsidiary way, as a result of the Second Advent. Reading the glowing predictions of the Prophets we might wonder if anything could exceed the blessedness of it. When the saints shine in heavenly glory, and quietness and assurance forever fill the world; when such is the exuberant fertility of the emancipated earth that it is no exaggeration for the prophet to say, “The mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands” (Isa. 55:12), we might well imagine that the climax is reached. But it is not so. God has a good pleasure which He has purposed in Himself for the glory of Christ, and this concerns a sphere even wider than that of redeemed saints and a redeemed millennial earth, Christ is the Heir of all things. His glory is the supreme consideration. He is Pre-eminent. It is only when we view things from this angle that we reach the climax.
We get this view presented to us in Ephesians 1:9-14. Here, as in chapter 4, we read of the Spirit being given to us as a seal until redemption’s hour is come, but He is also spoken of as “the earnest of our inheritance,” and the redemption is called “the redemption of the purchased possession,” because not only the bodies of the saints are in view, but the whole inheritance in so far as it has been marred by sin.
God has a “will.” As to it the world remains in ignorance and indifference. The “mystery” or secret of it is made known to us, however, as verse 9 states; and we find it to be according to His “pleasure,” which is neither harsh nor arbitrary, but emphatically “good.”
And what is this “mystery of His will according to His good pleasure”? First, it is to have an age or dispensation which is to be the “fullness of times” — the climax and completion of the ages, since it is to be marked by administrative perfection, and every preceding age will be seen to have been but preparatory to it. Second, it is to administer that coming age by Christ, the man of His good pleasure, the One of whom it had been said prophetically “the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand” (Isa. 53:10).
When our Lord Jesus comes again in glory with all His saints it will be to take His place as Head over all things. God is going to purify the earth through judgments and then “gather together in one all things in Christ” that is, He will head up all things in Him. Christ will be as the exalted apex of a pyramid— if we may use such a figure. The apex or top stone of a pyramid is itself a perfect pyramid in shape. All the upward lines and faces of the pyramid converge in it. It crowns the whole.
Nor will it be only earth that lies blessed beneath Him, for the “all things” is said to include both those “which are in heaven, and which are on earth.” The “all things” then evidently means all things which exist in every sphere of blessing, whether heavenly or earthly, to the utmost bounds. One sphere is excluded— the sphere of judgment. Yet even this— “the things under the earth” — is to bow at the name of Jesus according to Philippians 2:10. It must acknowledge Him, though severed from Him and under the frown of God. All things, that then shall lie in the sunlight of God’s favor, will find their Head and supreme glory in Christ.
In this way God is going to redeem His purchased possession. For long, sin has lain like a heavy encumbrance or mortgage upon a large part of the fair inheritance, upon every part of it which has in any way been touched or tarnished by evil. All was His by creation, but at the first advent it became a “purchased possession” by the death of Christ; just as in the parable the field was purchased as well as the treasure in it (see Matt. 13:44). At the second advent the encumbrance will be lifted from the inheritance. The Lord Jesus will put into effect by power those rights which were established by blood when He came in lowliness and humiliation, for it was—
“By weakness and defeat
He won the meed and crown.”
We add one thing: When He thus takes up the inheritance He will do so in His saints. This was indicated in Daniel 7, for when in the vision “One like the Son of Man came with the clouds of heaven... and there was given Him dominion and glory and a kingdom” (vv. 13-14), then “the time came that the saints possessed the kingdom” (v. 22). Just as a king might occupy conquered territory by putting his troops and officials in post session, so will it be then. We shall get our inheritance when Christ gets His. This is what the Apostle means when he prays that we “may know... what the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints” (Eph. 1:18). It is not that the saints are His inheritance, but that He takes up His inheritance in His saints, by putting His saints in possession.
That we should have any inheritance at all in the day of glory is wonderful. But how greatly will its sweetness be intensified by the fact that what we then shall be possessed of we shall hold as on God’s behalf and as joint-heirs with Christ.
You have made a distinction between purchase and redemption. Can that distinction be clearly found in Scripture?
Yes. Scripture speaks of some who go as far as “even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction” (2 Peter 2:1). They were “bought,” for the Lord Jesus has acquired universal rights by His death and resurrection, and He is Lord of all. They were not, however, redeemed.
No one can be redeemed without purchase; yet many may be purchased who are not redeemed.
The fourth chapter of Ruth illustrates the point. When Boaz challenged the kinsman nearer than himself as to the redemption of Elimelech’s inheritance, at first the man proposed to act. All that occurred to him for the moment was the question of purchase, and it might have been a profitable transaction. When Boaz reminded him that redemption went further than mere purchase and involved his taking up all the rights and duties connected with the estate, the lifting up of the fallen, the entering into personal relationship with Ruth, and through her with Naomi, then he declined.
This makes the distinction pretty clear.
We read in Scripture of our mortal bodies being quickened. Some say that has already taken place and that therefore no Christian should suffer from sickness. Is that correct?
It is not. The passage in question does not say that our mortal bodies have been quickened. It says, “If the Spirit... dwell in you, He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by His Spirit that dwelleth in you” (Rom. 8:11); and here we have an explanation of how “the redemption of our body,” spoken of in verse 23, is going to be accomplished. God will do it; but as John 5:28 shows it will be by the voice of the Lord Jesus, and it will also be by the energy of the indwelling Spirit. All three Persons of the Godhead will be active in our final redemption.
The premise thus being false, the conclusion drawn from it, as to sickness, falls to the ground.
Apart from this, however, one wonders why people content themselves with such shallow reasonings. If our bodies were quickened there would be no “should not” nor “ought not” about it; we simply “could not” be sick. We could not even die! After all, sickness is mere child’s play when compared to death. Why do not people come boldly out with the full consequences of their theories? Because to do so would involve their folly being manifest to all men.
Will the whole work of redeeming the purchased possession take place in a moment?
Not in a moment, but in a comparatively short space of time.
First in order the Lord will redeem the bodies of His saints. He will come for them, raising the dead, changing the living, and rapturing all into His own presence according to 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17. He will espouse His bride as is typified in the peaceful way in which Boaz took Ruth.
Then He “shall set His hand again the second time to recover the remnant of His people which shall be left” (Isa. 11:11), i.e., the remnant of His people Israel. This will be no peaceful process, but involve terrific judgments upon earth. Isaiah 63:1-6 gives us a description, and the victorious, all-conquering Messiah speaks in verses 3 to 6 by the prophet’s lips. He says, “The day of vengeance is in mine heart, and the year of my redeemed is come.” Israel will be redeemed by judgment once more, as of old out of the land of Egypt.
Then, thirdly, “He will destroy... the face of the covering cast over all people and the wail that is spread over all nations” (Isa. 25:7). The nations will be first judged and then blessed.
Lastly, when His throne is exalted in Zion the living waters will flow forth (see Ezek. 47:1-12) and bring amazing fertility to the very earth. This passage is doubtless emblematical of spiritual blessing but primarily must be taken in its literal sense. The curse will be lifted from off the face of creation.
All this will not take long, for “a short work will the Lord make upon the earth” (Rom. 9:28).
We read in Acts 3:21 of “the restitution of all things.” Does not this mean that ultimately everybody will be redeemed and brought into blessing?
It does not. That verse speaks of “the times of restitution of all things,” i.e., the millennial age of which God had spoken by His prophets from the earliest moments. Enoch’s prophecy, for instance, was concerning that day, as recorded in Jude 14, whilst the fifteenth verse describes the judgments that precede the ushering in of the reign of peace. That phrase exactly describes the character of the millennium. Throughout the ages God has brought forth to men many things that are His purpose for this world. He created Adam as head, and he sinned. He established government in Noah, and it was corrupted. He gave His law through Moses, and it was broken. He instituted priesthood in Aaron, and it was perverted. He set up kingly authority in David, and it collapsed.
These things and every other good thing that is in His purpose will be restored in the coming age. And not only restored, but established in much greater fullness and in absolute perfection because all will then be centered in Christ. He will be set as God’s King upon His holy hill of Zion (see Psa. 2). He will be crowned with glory and honor as the Son of Man— the last Adam— and have dominion over the works of Jehovah’s hands (see Psa. 8).
Nothing is said as to the restitution of all persons. Many plain scriptures refute this universalist theory, and to attempt to foist it into this passage is an outrage on Scripture’s language.
How do you reconcile the fact that the second coming of Christ brings about the day of redemption, with the fact that His millennial reign closes with a great rebellion?
No reconciliation is needed. If any one or anything redeemed by Christ at His second advent were in any way again brought under the power of evil, there would of course be grave difficulty. There is, however, no trace of this. Satan, released from the abyss, is the instigator of the great final rebellion (see Rev. 20:7-10) and he is not redeemed. Vast multitudes will have been born during the thousand years. They will never have known the blighting effects of sin by sad experience, and if not born again will fall before Satan’s fresh temptations. But such were never redeemed.
Nor will anything be accomplished by their mad rebellion save their own utter destruction and final judgment. They may compass about the camp of the saints and the beloved city, but not a hair of the head of any of the former nor the least stone of the latter will be disturbed by them.
God will seize that occasion, however, to fold up as a worn out vesture the present heaven and earth and perpetuate redemption’s wonderful story in a new heaven and a new earth.
How then would you summarize the distinction between the millennium and the eternal state?
The one is as the vestibule or ante chamber to the other. Both are characterized by righteousness; but in the one it reigns, for sin is not finally dealt with but rather sternly repressed, in the other it dwells for, the last judgment over, it retreats from the judicial throne to the sweet freedom of love and home.
The millennium will be the vindication on this earth of all God’s ways in righteous and holy government. How necessary is this! In this world His authority has been repudiated, and every thought of His has been abused in men’s hands. How appropriate then that here in this world there shall be manifested for the complete cycle of a thousand years the perfection of all His thoughts and arrangements when once taken up and put into execution by Christ.
That demonstration accomplished, Satan is permitted to display once more his implacable hatred, and men their irremediable corruption by nature. This leads to the final great act of judgment. As its consequence sin, whether in the devil and his angels, or in evil men, will forever lie under wrath and penalty in a limited and circumscribed place “the lake of fire.” As an active principle, capable of further mischief, it will cease to be.
In the new heaven and new earth all will be new (see Rev. 21:5). That is, everything will then be on the basis of “new creation,” and suitable to the full and unrestrained expression of all God’s nature, the fruition of His eternal purpose. We, thank God, are on that basis now as “in Christ” (see 2 Cor. 5:17).
New creation rests, as we know, upon Christ’s death as its basis. By and by the Sitter upon the throne, who is none other than our Lord Jesus Christ, will say, “Behold, I make all things new... It is done” (Rev. 21:5 and 6). He will say that then because there was a day when on the cross He said, “It is finished.”
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Summary and Conclusion
We have now surveyed in brief outline some of the great foundations of the faith of Christ. There has been nothing exhaustive about our treatment of them. Other foundation truths might have been added, and there are great depths that we have not touched in those that we have considered. Still, we have had before us the authoritative Word of God, and have considered our themes in the light of its statements. Let us finish by attempting to sum up our conclusions in a general way under four definite heads. Firstly, then, we would say that the faith is one.
We speak frequently enough of the truths of Scripture, yet we must always remember that each individual item which we may call a truth is but a part of one whole, which is the truth. A wheel may have many spokes, the arch of a bridge may contain many stones, and we may concentrate our thoughts for a given time upon one spoke or one stone, yet we always have in the back of our minds the fact that it is but a part of a greater whole. So it must be as we concentrate upon any of the foundation truths of our holy faith. They are not disconnected items which may be brought together in any fashion. They are intimately connected and organically one.
Secondly, as a consequence of this no part of truth can be denied or weakened without injury to the whole.
If one spoke be broken the strength of the wheel is threatened. If one stone of the arch be dislodged the stability of the whole is destroyed. If one foundation truth of Scripture be denied the faith of Christ is imperiled, its consistency is broken up, and there is no knowing how far the mischief may spread. We gave an illustration of this at the end of the chapter on Eternal Punishment, for at this point above all others does the devil attempt to insert the thin edge of the wedge of unbelief. He knows full well that especially here are men tempted to be partial in their thoughts, and at the same time that the point appears to be one which can be left unguarded without any very serious consequences following. As we showed, however, very serious consequences do invariably follow, and sometimes those who begin by denying eternal punishment on humanitarian grounds end by denying the faith in its entirety.
We entreat our readers to lay hold of this fact very firmly, for the faith is that at which Satan, the god and prince of this world, is ever aiming. Scripture presents him to us, not so much as a monster who aims at the corrupting of the morals of mankind; but rather as transforming himself into an angel of light, that he may aim at the faith of the saints and the corruption of the faith of Christianity.
For instance, in the parable of the sower the devil is mentioned: “Then cometh the devil, and taketh away the word out of their hearts, lest they should believe and be saved” (Luke 8:12). The aim of the devil here is to prevent faith in God’s word. Again, when Peter was in great danger from Satan’s wiles the Lord told him, saying, “Satan hath desired to have you that he may sift you as wheat: but I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not” (Luke 22:31-32). The real object of attack was Peter’s faith. In 1 Timothy 4:1 the Apostle Paul predicts that in the latter times some shall give heed to “seducing spirits and doctrines of devils,” the result of which will be that they “depart from the faith.” The aim of the spirits of evil in all the practices of spiritism is the seduction of souls from the faith. Hence in warning the saints of Satan’s activities as a roaring lion, Peter enjoins upon them to resist him, “steadfast in the faith” (1 Peter 5:8,9), for if the faith be held his terror departs.
Let us, therefore, beware of anything which would weaken in our minds these great foundation truths or any part of them. There may be many points of detail about the superstructure, as to which believers may not see eye to eye, and as to these we have to exercise patience one with another, while seeking a clearer understanding, in the spirit of that word, “If in anything ye be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this unto you” (Phil. 3:15). But there must be absolutely no hesitation when the foundations are at stake. Then “no compromise” becomes the watchword, and faithfulness to our Lord and His truth demands a clear-cut separation from those who deny these foundations in any part, and from all their associates.
Thirdly, we observe that when we thus view the foundations of the faith as one whole we find that while they are so great as to elude the grasp of our reason, there is nothing about them which is repugnant to reason.
We are far from exalting human reason as a standard or test. We rather affirm that man’s reason, like every other part of him, has suffered as the result of his fall. His reason has become fallen reason, and hence is peculiarly unreliable when dealing with the things of God. Even when, as the result of conversion, the Christian’s reasoning powers are restored to something at least of their proper use, they are by no means infallible; yet there is absolutely nothing about the Christian faith that is unreasonable, or that puts a strain upon reasonable intelligence as do false religions or the corruptions of Christianity. If we view items of truth as isolated fragments we may perhaps find intellectual difficulties, but never when once we gain some conception of the truth in its entirety— in the wide sweep of its majestic circle.
On the other hand, any conception we may get of the faith as a whole is never complete and absolute. Being divine it lies beyond the embrace of our finite minds. We may apprehend it, yet can we never comprehend it. It transcends our highest thought just because it is of God.
It is very important to remember this, because a spirit of mental arrogance peculiarly marks the present age. Men have made such wonderful discoveries, and solved such intricate problems, and formulated such complex and highly imaginative philosophies, that they feel themselves entirely competent to install themselves as masters of the Christian faith, with liberty to criticize and alter it as they please. In result they do but furnish an excellent modern illustration of the truth of the inspired words, “If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, He taketh the wise in their own craftiness. And again, The Lord knoweth the thoughts of the wise, that they are vain” (1 Cor. 3:18-20).
As Christians, we are mercifully delivered from that particular form of learned folly, but we may, nevertheless, get somewhat infected with its spirit and allow our minds far too much freedom in dealing with the things of God. It is an unquestionable fact that the errors and heresies which all through the centuries have distracted and injured the Church have had their origin not amongst the lowly and simple, the sheep and lambs of the flock of God, but amongst the gifted and the leaders, as indicated by the Apostle Paul in his farewell address to the elders of Ephesus (see Acts 20:28-30). Whilst therefore it is very right for us to follow the example of prophets of old and inquire and search diligently into what God has revealed, we must do so in that humility of mind which flows from a wholesome sense of our own mental littleness and consequent need of strengthening and enlightenment by the Spirit of God. This alone will keep us right and enable us to avoid the pitfalls which lie at either extreme.
It is harmful if we fail to catch a glimpse of the faith in its oneness and entirety. Viewing items of truth as isolated fragments we lay ourselves open to being easily deceived by the plausible apostles of error. We have not the power of testing what is preached to us as truth by seeing whether it fits in with the other parts of the truth whether that which is presented to us as a spoke of the wheel is really so or not. If we have some idea of the wheel as a whole, we can soon see if the spoke offered to us is of the right size, and length, and shape, or whether it is not.
It is even more harmful if, seeing the faith in its entirety, we assume that we know all about it. A spirit of self-confidence thus engendered lays us open quickly to the wiles of a foe who is far too clever for us, and we are in danger of falling into “the snare of the devil” (see 2 Tim. 2:25, 26). In such a condition we not merely get damaged ourselves, but inflict damage upon others by our false and erroneous notions; and only divine grace and power can deliver us.
Fourthly, and lastly, we emphasize that which was alluded to in the foreword— the exhortation of the inspired writer Jude. In his short epistle he begins by calling upon all the believers of his day to “earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints” (v. 3); he ends by instructing them to build “up yourselves on your most holy faith” (v. 20). In this twofold exhortation the first evidently is dependent upon the second. We therefore affirm that it is the business of all Christians to build themselves up upon, and earnestly contend for, the faith once delivered to the saints.
It stands to reason, of course, that we cannot build up ourselves upon that of which we are largely ignorant. Hence the great importance of making the Scriptures, wherein the faith is permanently enshrined, our daily meditation and food. We need not only to know them, but also to have them built into our minds and hearts, and our souls thus built up and established upon the solid basis which the faith supplies.
Then we are to contend for the faith. It has been delivered, not to apostles merely, nor to prophets, teachers, evangelists, or other gifted and prominent men, but “to the saints.”
The majority of those who read our simple lines will be young Christians, young in the faith at least, and probably young in years also. Well, as you close this little volume you must remember that as one of “the saints” i.e., those who have been separated to God, by divine call, by Christ’s work and by the action of the Spirit of God you have a responsibility as regards the faith; it has been delivered to you. How immense the privilege! How elevating the thought, if once it lays hold of you!
In a battalion there may be a thousand men, and but one carries the standard. In the Church of God there are thousands of thousands, yet the feeblest amongst them has his hand upon the flag! In some degree, therefore, the faith and its integrity are in your keeping. Can you regard yourself as a kind of private individual having no vital concern in the battles of the Lord, in the light of this?
No, the very reverse! You are concerned, you are interested in this great matter. To you comes the exhortation, “That good thing which was committed unto thee keep by the Holy Ghost which dwelleth in us” (2 Tim. 1:14). You are to contend earnestly for this precious faith.
God will preserve His own truth. We need have no fear as to that. Yet how great the privilege of being used in its maintenance. How happy for us if at the end of the earthly race we too can truthfully say with Paul, “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith” (2 Tim. 4:7).
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