One of the points on which the condition of the church of God hangs is whether obedience precedes blessing, or blessing obedience. Many are in some degree, though perhaps not by any means altogether, aware of the extent to which the principle has gone, that blessing must precede obedience where the will of God is ascertained; or how widely its influence is spreading. It is a strange point of connection between Irvingism and the subsisting systems. The directions (as far as they are apprehended in the minds of those concerned, which is the only way in which we are concerned in them), which have emanated from Mr. I. or those speaking with him, have certainly varied; but they have all borne directly upon retaining those subject to them in the systems current as religion in the world (though these are all asserted by them to be Babylon!), and upon the plea that they could take no step until they received the Spirit such as they themselves possessed. This has been frequently the result of direct instruction to persons who have gone to them.
Another principle has been adopted by a large body of the religious clergy, tending to the same point, that without tradition no step can be taken, because obedience becomes uncertain, and therefore dangerous. The result is wonderfully similar and seems to proceed from Satan: such uncertainty and difficulty of mind as leads a person to settle down in what is confessedly wrong and what he knows to be such. This, inevitably dulling the conscience, leads to a state of mind grievous to the Spirit of God, and necessarily lowering the moral energies of the parties concerned; for to him that hath shall more be given. The coalition between Irvingism and High Church principles in this respect has an astonishingly wide influence; and often so, when the persons concerned little suspect the source from which it flows; while it finds ample aliment in the natural feeling of timidity and unbelief, and assumes the justifiable principle of caution, and is never thought for a moment to be the result of man's disposition to acquiesce in evil, rather than act in trying circumstances.
In those who decline acting from the want of the power of the Spirit, it assumes the form of greater humility than usual and great dependence upon the Holy Ghost. On the other side it looks like great steadiness of character, and an indisposition to acquiesce in the movements unguided by principle, which the easily-led human mind is in so many ways making at the present moment. Thus certainly the fairest principles of conduct are brought to bear from such opposite and (but for this) mutually opposed sides, upon those who conscientiously do not acquiesce in the evil in which they find themselves placed. Nothing can be more opposed than the principles which lead to the conclusion on one side and on the other. In result. only they agree to stay where circumstances have placed them; which is just what the selfishness of unbelief will always do.
Now there is one thing only which can justly withstand the power over the mind of such nominally good views as these, so apparently opposed to evil; and that is obedience. There is nothing so humble, nothing so steady, as obedience; nothing which so marks the Spirit's presence, nothing so opposed to insubordination, nothing by which every ungodly voice must be so utterly silenced, as by obedience. I confess, when I see such very opposite principles leading to the same conclusion—principles so diametrically opposite in conflict with each other, as resting on the presence of the Spirit and tradition, I am led to think that the result is not the effect of principles in either case, but of some entirely different motive; and that the only operation of the principles is to neutralize in either case some other principle which would act in moving those who plead them; and consequently, by so neutralizing it, to leave them where they were, without respect to the right or wrong of the case; which is precisely the result in the present instance. And such I believe to be the fact. But if God have any will in the matter, and this consequently terminates in disobedience, it becomes a very positive evil, most grievous to the Spirit of God (supposed to be, or waited for), and makes tradition, discoverable or undiscoverable, to be such as renders void the word of God. It is reserved for these days, among Protestants, to make tradition a necessary supplement to the word of God; for it is a very great mistake that it was ever used in the early church in the way now proposed. It was there, whether wisely or unwisely, a positive tradition, and in confirmation of doctrines avowedly taught and declared. A tradition that they had not yet, or did not know to be the security of the church, was an imbecility reserved surely for a state of hopeless decay.
But the assertion that obedience is the great principle to go on, obedience to known truth; not plans of our own mind, but obedience to known truth as the portion of a single-eyed, humble, simple mind; and that this is the way of these additional blessings, which are matters of God's gift, obedience to the order of which is then the part of every spiritual mind, is of very great importance. But in all cases, and under all circumstances, gifts or no gifts, obedience is the path of a Christian—the path of duty and blessing.
I would first show the essentiality of the principle, its deep essentiality; then, that it is the preliminary of blessing; and lastly, that it is the order of all special gift in Christ, the έϕ’ώ on which it all flows forth. The first establishes the principle; the last applies it.
Obedience is the only rightful state of the creature, or God would cease to be supreme—would cease to be God. God may show the impotency of the creature by turning all the rebellions it may be guilty of to His own purpose in blessing, and them that are adversaries bound to it in His own power. But the only rightful position of the creature is obedience: on this hangs all the order of creation; on this hang sin and righteousness. The definition of sin is lawlessness, doing one's own will. “He that doeth the will of God abideth forever.”
Let us see how distinctly this is brought out in scripture in its broadest lines. The first man, and the Second, the Lord from heaven, the great heads and types of ruin and blessing, are there distinguished as the disobedient and the obedient ones. “By one man's disobedience the many were made sinners; by the obedience of One the many were made righteous.” The first man, Adam, did his own will, and perished by it. He was just under a test of obedience. This was the critical point of the first man's standing and blessing. “Thou shalt not eat “: he did eat and was ruined Death, the wages of sin, came in, as the consequence of man's act, that not being the will of God; death was the wages of sin, and sin was disobedience, insubjection to God. Here its character and result were determined, the hinge of man's fate, the now wide open door to every evil; but at which mercy entered before man was excluded, that he might bear it with him into the desert into which he was driven, justly driven without.
Precisely the opposite was found in the blessed and perfect Savior. Would you know His character, His style, now that He is ushered in, in His own humble but holy and perfect announcement? “Lo! I come, in the volume of the book it is written of Me [His everlasting character], to do Thy will, O God.” I am content to do it; “yea Thy law is within My heart.” This was His constant character, His perfectness as man. So we read in the course of His life, “My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me, and to finish His work.” This character was stamped on every circumstance. He took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men. And as in life He did always such things as pleased His Father (for He sought not His own will but the will of Him that sent Him), so there was no limit to its extent any more than to its perfectness. For loving His own to the end, He became obedient unto death, the death of the cross; for though willingly doing it, this commandment had He received from His Father. He had now ears dug for Him (Psa. 40:66Sacrifice and offering thou didst not desire; mine ears hast thou opened: burnt offering and sin offering hast thou not required. (Psalm 40:6)). The Lord God opened them, and He was not rebellious neither turned away back, but “gave His back to the smiters and His cheeks to them that plucked off the hair “; nor hid His face from all that obedience brought Him into, power or no power; for He was crucified in weakness, though He liveth by the power of God. His power was the powerful service of God, His weakness the patience of His will. So it was.
Obedience was the principle on which He acted in temptation. “It is written” was ever His reply to the tempter's suggestion; and when the tempter would thereupon have guilefully alleged the promise (“It is written, He shall give” &c.), our Lord met him by the answer, “It is written again “; an answer showing the principle of obedience as contrasted with that of assumption, of the assumption even of true privilege a most important truth, but of this more hereafter. Perhaps I have said more than is needful on this; for the one sentence, “Lo! I come to do Thy will, O God,” to the believer stamps the character, and fills up the principle of the life of the Holy Jesus. He was the type of obedience. Though He were a Son, yet learned He obedience by the things which He suffered. The essential contrast to this is in antichrist, “the king [that] shall do according to his will.” This is his characteristic; not regarding any, “he shall do according to his will, and magnify himself.
(To be continued).