I do not for the present make any remark on chapter vi. Only we may note that the Lord is gathering distinctly around Himself, apart from the nation, and that He addresses His disciples as thus separated-as those already called to possess the kingdom. But in chapter vii. we have the Lord brought out in a far greater character, and more fully revealed, than as the fulfiller of promise. He is entirely a divine person, and consequently reaches out beyond Judaism, and even human life, in this world. Still the Jews are recognized by the Gentile whom the Lord blesses: and this was right. The Lord did the same. It was the lowliness and submission to God's ways which the knowledge of God, true faith, always produces. Remark here, too, a principle which will be found to shine forth through all the Gospels, namely, that whenever Christ was manifested as God, it was impossible that He could be confined to His relationship to the Jews. God present in His own nature, as love, cannot be confined to the special relationship to a nation to whom He has made promises; although he may', and surely will, faithfully meet them according to promise. This is largely and specially brought out in John; where, indeed, however, the principle reaches further, and thereby assumes another character. The Jews are there looked at, already, in the first chapter, as reprobate, and so treated; though dealt with, still, all through the Gospel. " He came to his own, and his own received him not." The world, too, is viewed as blind. " The world knew him not." It was that phenomenon known only in morals, the light shining in darkness. The effect of this is to bring out the Lord in two characters in that Gospel-first, as God, as light in the world, and as such when forcing the conscience to attend to Him, bringing out the terrible truth that men love darkness rather than light-that they will not have God such as He is. This especially, and formally, in the eighth, when His word is rejected, as His work is in the ninth. But this makes a turning-point in the Gospel after the first three chapters, which are preface. The first, Christ in nature-Christ incarnate-Christ in work of blessing on earth-Christ (as John Baptist also) calling and gathering on the earth; which reaches on, by His servants, to His millennial presence on earth: in all which, note, no heavenly character or office of Christ is given, as is ever the case in John's writings. The second gives the millennial kingdom. The third what is needed for the kingdom, and heavenly things; where John also brings out His full person and glory in grace. Then, being driven out of Judea, the new order of things is intimated, from God's nature and the Father's love, in the fourth chapter. Thereon, to the end of the seventh, Christ is presented the divine, lifegiving Son of God; in incarnation, and as the dying Son of man; the Giver of the Spirit, as the feast of tabernacles, the figure of earthly rest, could not yet be kept by Him. Then, His word being rejected in the eighth, in the ninth He gives sight, and this brings in effectual grace; and, rejected though He be, He will have His sheep. Here we have not simply God, who is Light in darkness, revealed, but the Father sending the Son in grace. This distinction is always kept up in John. When grace is spoken of it is the Father and the Son; the Father sending the Son. While as mere light it is God. But this expression of Father and Son refers to grace revealed and effectual, not to the love of God in His nature and character. Where this is spoken of it is still God. " God so loved the world." I may follow this gospel and its character more in detail, if it suit you and the Lord so will, another time: but this leads me back to the general truth that Christ as revealing God shines necessarily out beyond Israel. Thus, in a very striking and beautiful example, the Syrophenician woman. There the Lord seems to hold back and confine Himself to Israel. " am not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." " It is not meet to take the children's bread and to cast it to the dogs." The poor woman says, " Truth, Lord, but the dogs eat of the crumbs that fall from their master's table." Could He say, God is not so good as you suppose? He has no crumbs for the wretched, who even look to Him through grace? impossible. It would have been denying, not revealing, God; and her faith is at once met. Remark, too, again here, how lowly faith is and how it submits to God's sovereign will! She owns herself a dog, and the privilege of, being near God, as Israel was, as a nation. But her faith pierces through the difficulty, with a want, to Him who revealed God in love; and divine goodness, which had taught her to trust in it, met, could not but meet, that confiding trust.
Now in the seventh chapter of Luke the Lord fully takes the divine place. He is owned by the Gentile as One who can dispose of all, as he himself ordered his soldiers about; and the Lord owns his faith. " I have not found so great faith; no, not in Israel." In the next recorded event He goes further in the display of divine power and goodness. " When the Lord saw her He had compassion on her." That was His first thought; and to the bereaved widow He spoke first, and this was God too, though as man near to her sorrow. But divine power was there too; and a word from Him woke up to conscious life the young man they were about to bury. But power, the fullest, divine power, did not obliterate goodness, nor cannot. God uses power, but He is love. He delivered him to his mother.
This reached the ears of John. The very dead were raised, and he remained in prison. He sends to know, Is the promised One come? He trusts the word of Him of whom he had heard such things, but he wants to know if He be the One that should come. John is to believe in Christ, not Christ receive testimony from men. But " He that should come" is the promised One. And John is to receive Him, as others, by the testimony which He gave of Himself, as setting right all the sorrows that sin and Satan had brought into the world, and in grace caring for the poor. But this was more than promise, though it witnessed to the promised One. It proved the presence of One who was love and had all power. But because He manifested God He was the rejected One, and blessed was he who should not be offended in Him. If He came in promise, as man expected. Him, it would not have been in the grace of divine power come down in love to every want. But because He did, though His arm was not shortened, " He was despised and rejected of men." However, when John's messengers were gone, the Lord bears testimony to the captive one. He was Jehovah's messenger, sent before His face to prepare His way. But it was really Jehovah who was come. But he who mourned to them, and he who piped to them, were alike rejected by that generation. One class alone received the Lord-the humbled ones who had owned their sinfulness. These intelligently justified God's ways in both John and Christ. But it went far beyond a Messiah: they had morally met God. They owned they needed repentance; they had deserved the ax. They owned the suitableness of grace. It was not merely Messiah they received. Perhaps, in some of the happiest cases, they are not much occupied with this, though they may have recognized Him as such. They wanted compassionate grace and they had found it: They recognized the justice of God in condemning them and calling them to repentance. They acknowledged His sovereign goodness in having to do with and in receiving worthless sinners. They justified God. One who was self-righteous thought John and divine grace alike out of place. Repentance was all well for others; they were the heirs of the kingdom. Now this is characteristic of Luke. The promised One was there no doubt. But it was in grace to men, grace bringing home to them their moral state. They were meeting God. His way, such as He was in truth, John prepared; Him, in His own person and ways, Christ fully revealed; God manifest in flesh meeting sorrow, meeting.
Satan's power, meeting death, meeting sin, in grace. They who felt all these found God in perfect grace there; the friend, indeed, not of the lame, and blind, and deaf merely; but, more wondrous still, of publicans and sinners. They-0 how willingly! justified God in,",His ways; while they did so truly and righteously, in what led them to it, in the mourning testimony of John, who coming in the way of righteousness, went into the desert alone, (for there was none righteous; no, not one,) and calling for good fruit, found only that which sinners could, through grace, come with-the confession that they had borne bad fruit. But this gave understanding. The conscience, recognizing the state be who has it is in, finds in the manifestation of God Himself in grace all it wants, and what infinitely attracts the heart. The knowledge of God is found through conscience, not through the understanding. The convicted sinner is wisdom's child: he knows himself-the hardest of all knowledge to acquire. And God in grace meets his state exactly. But such a manifestation of God does not meet the Pharisee. Right and wrong he knows, and can judge of God's dealing in grace; but not the smallest ray of it enters his soul. Yet God can only be so revealed to man who is a sinner, if it be not in eternal judgment: and even so He is not known, for He is love; that is, he does not know God at all. Intellect never knows grace; self-righteousness does not want it. We learn to know God through conscience, when grace has awakened to feel its need. Here the child of wisdom is found. The history of the poor woman and the Pharisee is the example of this. The poor sinner was the child of wisdom. She judged her sins with God: she had found Him in grace for her sins. She did not know forgiveness, but she had tasted love. It had won her confidence, the true divinely-given confidence of an bumbled heart. This was Christ's work in the world. At the beginning Satan had gained man to evil and lust by first producing distrust of God. Why had God kept back this one tree? Man would be like Him if he had. Confidence in God was gone; then lust came in. The blessed Redeemer, while coming indeed to put away sin, yet in His life as the manifestation of God, had come winning back the confidence of man's heart by perfect love-grace in the midst of sin; humbled to the lowest to bring it wherever there was a want: to win man by his wants, and sorrows, and even his sins, where by grace the true sense of them was, back to God; that he might trust in God, because He was God, in love, when he could trust in none else, and thus know Him as God in the fullest revelation of Him-a child of wisdom, true in heart, and knowing God. Such was this poor sinner; justly feeling her sins, but feeling that being such, and feeling herself such, there was One she could trust. Had He been less than God, she could not-had no right to do so-no profit in doing it. It would not meet her case. What God was had reached her heart. She could not have explained it. But it had met her case.
How lovely is this, and yet how humbling to man! In the Pharisee we have clear intellect-the perception of right and wrong, as far as natural conscience goes. All that was in Christ, all that was in God manifested in grace, he had had no perception of, saw no beauty in it. His eye was blind as to God. He was no prophet, to say nothing of the promised One.' This the Lord showed He was, by exposing his heart, and noting to him what state he was in; then leaves him, and the cavilers he was surrounded by.
His heart was with the sinner, the humbled one. Her sins, He had declared to all, were forgiven; hut to her He turns, to unfold all God's grace, to give rest to a weary heart-" Thy sins are forgiven thee." No concealing, no marring integrity by softening matters with her; though owning all that grace had wrought, (she loved much) standing by her, with the heartless. When He notices her sins, she would not have had it otherwise. We never would when grace really works. " Thy sins"-but notices it as God,. which He could, and could righteously, through His coming work -" Thy sins are forgiven thee." Man's cavils do not interrupt His work of grace: " Go in peace; thy faith hath saved thee." What words from a divine Redeemer! Sins forgiven, faith in divine love owned, and salvation declared to be possessed by it: peace-perfect, divinely-given peace, for her! She had not trusted the heart of God in vain. He had revealed Himself that she might trust it. Grace was greater than sin, though it allowed none of it. It wrought conviction, confession, confidence; but it gave forgiveness, salvation, peace: for God, who had restored the soul, and more, by the revelation of Himself, was there. It seems to me, besides this profoundly interesting individual case, instructive to see how, while manifested clearly as the promised One, the Savior in this Gospel passes on, by the way in which He is manifested, into His divine manifestation in grace. It is not followed here as in Matthew, which speaks of dealings with Israel, with woes to Chorazin and Bethsaida, though even there it issues in grace; but in the manifestation of God in grace, and the picture of a poor sinner become the child of wisdom, as taught her soul's need, and the grace of God to meet it. Observe here, too, how love is known, and brokenness of heart trusts it before the answer of peace is given by Him who could do so.
Our chapter gives us thus the God of the Gentiles; the God who delivers from death, raises from it; the God who meets the sinner in grace, when all sin is known, and sends him away in peace from Himself. It is well to have to do with such a God!
(Continued from page 42.)