THE Son of God, having been rejected by men, and cast out from the world, a vast change in the ways of God with the human race follows of necessity. Man requited God in His highest love to the world, in the gift of His Son, by the most inveterate enmity, and, such being the case, we may well ask, “What, then, is God’s answer to the ways of man?” It is twofold. To the world, as a system, it is judgment; to individuals, who repent and believe His message of reconciliation, it is grace. God will maintain His ways of judgment, and of grace, and make them evident to all, when, at the coming of His Son from heaven, this present age shall end.
We will touch upon God’s ways of grace in the paper now before the reader; in the next we will speak of His ways of judgment.
In the first place we observe that the way of God, in His abounding grace toward man at this present time, finds its explanation in the exaltation and the glory of His Son on the throne of divine majesty, and His ways with man, in this age, will never be justly understood unless the exaltation of Christ be apprehended. Jesus has passed out of the world―He has gone to the Father―the world sees Him no more―but God, by His Spirit, makes good to such as believe, the things He declares in His word respecting His Son.
THE GOSPEL OF GOD IS NOW SENT TO ALL THE WORLD.
Neither family nor kingdom is called out from the world by God now, as was the case in other ages, but God speaks to man from heaven, irrespective of race, concerning His Son, once slain, but now exalted in heaven. In His grace God reveals to men, without distinction, how that, by the blood of Christ, He can justify the worst of sinners, and yet remain the just God. (Rom. 3:25, 26). All men are now alike welcome to the mercy-seat, whether Jew or Gentile, religious or prodigal, and whoever comes to God through Christ, receives pardon, and is justified; and such is God’s love to man, that, by virtue of the atonement of Christ, He, as it were, beseeches men to be reconciled to Himself. (2 Cor. 5:21.)
“After He was risen” Jesus commanded His apostles, “Go ye into all the world” ― not merely to Jewish confines, as was the case prior to His death― “and preach the gospel to every creature.” (Mark 16:14, 15.) Now that Christ is in heaven God reveals His Gospel as His power to salvation to everyone who believes. (Rom. 1:16.) Christ, who died for sinners, sits at the right hand of God, and in His honor, mercy is world-wide.
This abounding grace of God Satan makes his point of attack. For the eighteen hundred years of Christianity the truths of free grace have been assailed by the enemy―they have been clouded and hidden, denied and rejected, but God has made them to shine out before men, and to enlighten the souls of His people. In defense of these truths men have been persecuted and slain, cast to wild beasts, or burned at the stake. And in our own times the warfare proceeds, and so it will to the end. We have but to read the Epistle to the Galatian Churches to see how soon the enemy dogged the steps of God’s servants and corrupted men’s minds by another gospel.
THE HOLY GHOST NOW INDWELLS THE BELIEVER.
By His good news to man, God reveals more than pardon and justification through Christ’s death and His resurrection. God bestows upon those who believe, the favor of the child’s intimacy with the Father. Consequent upon the ascent of our Saviour to heaven, the Holy Ghost has come down to this earth (John 14:17, 25, 26), and He dwells in the children of God, enabling them to say, “Abba, Father.” (Rom. 8:15.) Of this intimacy the world is ignorant―the natural eye could see the pillar of cloud and fire going before the host of Israel, and men saw the Son of Man on earth; but the world does not see, and, therefore, cannot receive, the Spirit of God. The present age has for its great characteristic, in the wonderful ways of God with man, the fact of the Holy Spirit of God being on the earth, dwelling in the children of God, and ministering to them of Christ by the Scriptures.
Yet how little is the reality of the presence of the Spirit of God on earth recognized, and how often are the children of God trying to evolve a spirituality out of themselves, instead of surrendering themselves to God the Spirit’s guidance and teaching!
CHRIST EXALTED IN HEAVEN THE HIGH PRIEST.
The spiritual character of true Christian worship is also one of the special characteristics of real Christianity. It is one of God’s ways with His people of this age, that their worship should not be of a kind that the mere natural eye or ear can enter into, and in the exaltation of Christ as High Priest in heaven we have one great reason for this fact. In the first place no merely outward form of worship finds pleasure in God’s eyes. Christ solemnly rebuked exteriorism in the Pharisees. Beyond this, religious man nailed Christ to the cross, therefore in Christ’s cross is the death-knell of all mere human religion. Now God has magnified Christ as the Priest on high, and through and by Him spiritual worship arises to the Father. By Christ the sacrifice, Christ the High Priest, all Christians have liberty or boldness to enter into the Holiest of All, and to worship God without a veil between (Heb. 10:21, 22), to be before Him in His holiness in joy and rest.
We need hardly observe how bitterly and successfully Satan has attacked the truth of spiritual worship, and the glory of Christ, the High Priest. The gospel of God concerning His Son, and the free grace to sinners it proclaims, through the efficacy of Christ’s sacrifice being hidden from men’s eyes, they fall an easy prey to the false belief that God values as acts of worship, reverence to angels and to saints, impressions received through paintings and music, and other simply natural, and non-spiritual, elements. Thus the eye is kept bent towards the earth, instead of being lifted to heaven, where Christ is. Over the chief part of Christendom the priest presents himself to the worshipper, to the hiding from the worshipper of Christ the High Priest in heaven. The priest teaches the worshipper to regard the sacrifice of the altar, and hides thereby from his faith the open Holiest of All, where Christ is, who died and rose again. And thus, the heavenly glories of the Lord as Priest, which are unfolded in the Epistle to the Hebrews, are utterly ignored, or unknown, by vast multitudes in Christendom, and these multitudes are Jewish in their religious notions, and, too often, idolatry is added to their Judaism.
There was remarkable freedom amongst the patriarchs in their dealings with God, when He came down to earth and spoke with them; in the age of the law that followed, God retreated into the thick darkness, and man could not approach Him; now that the world has slain His Son, God brings His people, in spirit, to approach Him, and to be at liberty before Him, in His own dwelling-place in heaven, and to worship Him in spirit and in truth. The nearness existing between God and His people, is now greater than that of patriarchal days, being rather that of the child and the Father, than that of the friend with his friend. And here again we may exclaim, as sin hath abounded, so has grace much more abounded.
CHRIST IN HEAVEN, THE HEAD OF HIS CHURCH.
Again, in honor of Christ’s ascension to glory as Man, the Holy Spirit unites all who believe, to Him, the Head of His body, the Church, and makes them members of Christ, and one of another. Thus, being children of one family, and members of one body, neither nationalities nor differences of an earthly kind pertain to them. (1 Cor. 12:13.)
Now Satan’s object is the dishonor of Christ and the Scriptures of God, and thus, as in the age of law, he aimed his blows at the honor of God in the purity of Israel, His nation, so he now seeks to falsify in the Church, the practical expression of heavenly realities. The Church is allied with the world; it is impossible for the human eye to discover where the bright, heavenlike light of the Church begins, and where the deep darkness of the world ends. Further, the children of God are often at variance with each other, and the members of the one body are, alas, divided into a thousand fragments. Thus, as it was in ancient Israel, so there is in the Church captivity and idolatry. The one name of the Lord is too feebly recognized indeed, surveying Christianity as a whole, it is by no means supremely owned and honored. But neither Satan’s power nor the saints’ departure from the truth can hinder the purpose of God, and for these eighteen centuries He has pursued His wonderful work in pardoning and justifying sinners, and in putting His Spirit in His people, uniting them to Christ His Son in glory. In God’s own time, even as His purposes and promises respecting Israel shall be made good on the earth, so shall His purposes regarding His Church be made good, for though not on earth, yet in resurrection, all the members of the body of Christ will be together displayed with Him in glory.
THE HEAVENLY HOPE OF GOD’S PEOPLE OF THIS PRESENT AGE.
The climax of God’s grace to His people in this age will be the coming of His Son from heaven to take them into the Father’s house. In His faithfulness and grace none will be left out. Each and every believer will be called home together, and the earth will be vacated by every saint; and more, the dust of all saints of all ages will remain in the world no more, for all shall awake, arise, and ascend to glory at the call of Jesus. When this great event occurs, the day of grace will have closed, and God will deal in judgment with the world for the rejection of His Son, for despising His Spirit, and for scorning His gospel.