There are two distinct principles on which God deals with man as such, and on which also He deals with His people. These two principles are grace and government. The former is the blessed characteristic of God; He is the "God of all grace." The gospel is the great setting forth of this principle, as the Church in glory will be the eternal witness of it. God takes up a person and blesses him absolutely, without any reference to how he has behaved or what he deserves. That this might be done consistently with the claims of righteousness against the sinner, the cross was necessary. "So might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord" (Rom. 5:21).
Government on the other hand, is the reverse of this. It takes cognizance of the behavior of the person under it, and regulates its conduct toward him by his merits. We get the principle of government in those words in 1 Pet. 2:14: "Unto governors, as unto them that are sent by Him for the punishment of evildoers, and for the praise of them that do well." This word applies to human government, but the principle is the same whatever the sphere in which the government is exercised.
Now these two principles of grace and government find an exhibition in the family of God, and it is most important for us to remember that God acts toward us as His people on both these principles.
If I forget His grace when I have failed, I might get into despair. If I forget His government, I might grow careless, not remembering that "if ye live according to the flesh, ye are about to die" (Rom. 8:13. J.N.D. Trans.), and our reaping depends upon our sowing.
I wish to refer to an example of God's acting on these two principles, in the history of Abram.
In the first place, of course, the call that made Abram a saint was sovereign grace. He was born among idolators and was the object of God's electing favor just as distinctly as the chief of sinners. And the same is true of every saint of God. Salvation is all of grace. "Then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy." Rom. 9:16. But now that God has brought him to Himself, he came into the place where government as well as grace would be exercised toward him; and it is the same thing with ourselves when brought to God.
Abram has not been long in the place of favor before, under the severe pressure of circumstances, he gives up acting on the principle of faith on which alone we can please God, and adopts the world's principle of sight. He had gone to Canaan in faith, in obedience to the divine word. There he meets with a famine, and without consulting God he does what prudence would suggest, and what every man of the world would well understand—he leaves the land of famine for Egypt, the land of supply.
Now Egypt and Canaan respectively represent the two principles of sight and faith. God as Creator made them to picture these two principles for us. Egypt is a country that draws its resources from itself. It has a river that supplies it, as it were, independently of heaven, Canaan, on the other hand, was watered from above. It would have perished unless remembered in heaven, as Israel would have done in the wilderness had Jehovah forgotten to supply them. The physical characteristics of the countries are contrasted in Deuteronomy 11. Thus when Abram went down from Canaan to Egypt, his action was symbolic of what his heart was really doing. He was going from faith to sight, from being a man of faith to become a man of the world.
Now we must notice that Abram got what he sought. And as a rule it is so with people. If they seek money, they get it. Or an improved worldly position, they get it. Or praise of men, they get it. "Verily..., They have their reward," as the Lord said. For when Abram comes back from Egypt, we find both himself and his companion Lot in flourishing circumstances (Gen. 13:5).
Another thing to be remarked is that Abram made an untruthful compact with his wife Sarai, which is suggested by the principle of human prudence. "Say, I pray thee, thou art my sister" (Gen. 12:13).
This does not save him from trouble, but God delivers him. "He reproved kings for their sakes." This is pure grace. But the grace of God is more conspicuously shown in chapter 13. For God brings him, not merely out of Egypt, but to Bethel, to the place where his tent had been at the beginning. And there at the place of the altar that he had made at first, he calls on the name of Jehovah. This is grace like that of which we read in Hosea: "She shall sing there, as in the days of her youth, and as in the day when she came up out of the land of Egypt" (chap. 2: 15). Grace reinstates the soul in its original brightness.
But now we must notice God’s governmental ways, as I believe them to be, with Abram in connection with this turning aside. Although his own soul is restored to God, and the principle of sight, or the world, is judged in his heart, as we see beautifully displayed at the end of this chapter, where he gives up all the land to Lot; yet the mark of Egypt appears in his family when it no longer was seen in himself. Abram was a man of faith. He had come up out of Egypt without any love for Egypt, but not so his nephew Lot whom he had taken into Egypt with him. This we see in the end of Genesis 13.
There was one strip of the land of Canaan that was like Egypt (Gen. 13; 10), a lovely country that was like the garden of the Lord, well watered everywhere, not by the rain of heaven but by a river "like the land of Egypt." Lot had a taste for a land like Egypt, a land that Abram had taken him to see. It was a place where a man might live without dependence upon heaven. What an attractive place for our hearts naturally! Abram could give it up, but not so Lot. Still one thinks it must have been a bitter day for Abram when he saw Lot taking the path of sight which he, alas! had once shown him. The principle that on one occasion marked the uncle, permanently marked the nephew.
They parted, Lot adopting worldly or Egyptian principles, and Abram walking still before God—the one sowing trouble for himself because of God's government, the other treading the path, though trying to the flesh, yet of which it is written, "Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace." Pro. 3:17. May the Lord help us to walk in them.
Now was this, we may ask, the end of Egyptian principles in Abram's family? Alas, no. The next person in whom they appear is Sarai; and here Abram himself falls under them. There was in Abram's family a handmaid of Sarai, an Egyptian. That word Egyptian carries the mind back to that journey of Abram into Egypt. And we see that the principle that governs Sarai's mind now is the same that governed Abram's mind then. She gives her maid to be her husband's wife. It was an act that seemed the only way out of a difficulty. There was no thought of God in it. The result was long trouble again under God's government. It was fifteen years before the result of this act was put out of Abram's house, in the casting out of the bondwomen and her son. And then it was with a broken heart to Abram. And it was not until this point that the last trace of that turning aside into Egypt disappears from his house.
Now all this is not the tale of God's grace, but it is an illustration of His government. If Abram relieves himself by giving up divine principles, we find two results. In the first place, the blessed power of God restores the soul; and in the second, the government of God gives him to taste the bitterness of those principles on which he has acted, when they appear in other members of his family.
It is one thing to go into the world, and quite another to get the worldliness out of the household when once we have got it in. Still the discipline of God is not in anger, but it is that of a Father, in order to our being partakers of His holiness. "Shall we not... be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live?" (Heb. 12:9). It needs much grace to sustain the spirit in passing through the governmental consequences of our actions. Yet it is here that grace is occasionally displayed in the brightest way, as we see in David's history in 2 Samuel 15 and 17, which is an illustration of what we have in Peter: "Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time."