Thus the apostles became the heads of derivative power apparently, at any rate the existing depositary of authority, for derivative commission was never conferred upon them; and stood before the world the founders of the church among the Jews with commission to extend it to all nations. But the Lord, save in the testimony of apostasy by the apostle John in the Revelation, gives us no authentic account of any such transmission of it through the world. It formed no part of the record, nothing on which the church of God had to rest for its rejection. It is remarkable, too, that the prayer of our Lord in chap. 17. of John was literally fulfilled in the Jewish church (see the first chapters of the Acts of the apostles) in them who were one together, in the unity of those who believed on Him through their word, in their separation out of the world even to the surrender of their goods, and the witness thus afforded to it, praising God and having favor with all the people, great grace being upon them all. Here the scene all but closes: such we see not elsewhere at all. This was the church of those connected with Christ in the flesh, who had seen Him in the resurrection, and derived their authority from Him in earthly association, though endued with power from on high; ignorant of the times when the kingdom should be restored to Israel, but knowing that the heavens had received Him Who was able, and was to do it; and looking for the repentance of the people that He might return.
But they did not repent. Another witness was raised up when this witness of His resurrection was refused, and the power of the Holy Ghost in it rejected, to declare Jesus at the right hand of God; and to show demonstratively in His power, that they were doing as their fathers had ever done, resisting the Holy Ghost. But this was, in fact, a testimony against them in their rejection of the apostolic word and power recorded in the previous chapters, and is closed by the testimony of seeing heaven now opened, launching the church into a new scene, a scene of death to itself, but into which it entered by the perception of heaven open, and Jesus seen there. With this accordingly Jewish testimony to it, as a church, closed. Jesus was not now sitting as we see Him in spirit, but standing at once to receive His suffering church. Here the Jewish scene finally closed till they should say, “Blessed is He that cometh in the name of Jehovah,” accomplishing this word of the Lord, and the view of Him in heaven thus opened to the church. Individuals might be converted and doubtless were, but the order of Jewish ministry ceased. Heretofore it had been confined to Jerusalem, and in regular witness by the apostles, eyewitnesses of His resurrection to the Jews, and filling up and arranging the necessary offices, as we read in the Acts. But death and the heavenlies were now the portion of the church of God; its earthly order and continuance gone. And though Peter preached among the Jews and the rest we know not from scripture where, succession and order as to them we find not in scripture at all. There is no authentic statement at all, save that Peter continued his labors as apostle of the circumcision, the only place he holds in scripture; and that the apostle continued at Jerusalem, as we find in the Acts and other parts of the apostolic writings.
But another scene now opened. The heavenlies we have now seen as the positive, known, and only portion of the church (for the earthlies were Jewish); and the Jews had rejected the testimony of Christ risen and exalted by the Holy Ghost, from the apostles and Stephen. Stephen's ministry was suited to this. Chosen among the Hellenists, he formed the link, having purchased to himself a good degree and great boldness to bear witness, not as an eyewitness but by the Holy Ghost, of Christ. Accordingly this is entirely his charge: not “We cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard,” as Peter says to the rulers; but the witness of the rejection of the Holy Ghost, of which being full he saw Jesus in the heavenlies.
Thus he formed the link of Jewish rejection, and the position and state of the church which followed.
And what succeeds? Not Jewish order, but sovereign grace approving itself by the energy of the Spirit.
They were all scattered abroad except the apostles, lest it should seem derived from them; and they that were scattered abroad went everywhere preaching the word. Who sent them? Persecution. Who enabled them? The grace and Spirit of God: and it reached the Gentiles. There was no Gentile church but by what in those days is called irregularity; what is really the sovereignty of the grace by which any Gentile is called in the extraordinary and seemingly irregular act of God. For salvation is of the Jews. A Jewish Jesus is not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel; but a glorified Jesus does what seems good unto the glory of the grace of which He is now the indiscriminate, as to men, but sure distributor. But the character of the change which took place, is at once shown by this dispersion, and universal preaching wherever they went. The ordinary Christians preceded the apostles, that it might be plainly not derived from them. The whole matter then to justify anything was “The hand of the Lord was with them, and many believed:” a very irregular and out of the way thing for human nature, but which God has ordered as the way of salvation. Thus we find the instantaneous cessation of derivation arrangement in the Jewish rejection of the apostles, and the whole dispensation as carried on upon earth assuming a new character. This was the actual breaking of the earthly order, as the former seen with Stephen was the closing of the Jewish possibility of the dispensation.
But a new scene now opens, the regular Gentile form and order of the dispensation in the hands of the apostle Paul, the apostle of the uncircumcision, the apostle of the Gentiles. Did he then derive it from the apostles, or was he indeed a successor to our Lord by earthly appointment and derivation? No, in no wise. It was his continual boast that it was not so—his continual conflict with judaizing teachers, what was often charged on him as though lie needed it, with which they pressed his spirit, but which he as sternly and steadily refused, withstanding them who had such authority to the face. He is the type of the dispensation. Every dispensation has its character, from the manner in which Christ is manifested and introduced in it; and its order from Him under whom it takes its rise as to ministration.
God not yet known to the church in covenant, but the same God revealed as Almighty was the dispensation to Abraham called out to trust in Him, and gave its character to the path in which he had to walk in hope.
Christ, for now it was in covenant, revealed as Jehovah, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, was that under which Moses the leader in the wilderness, and Joshua in the land, led in succession the children, of Israel under the order of successional priesthood forever.
Christ manifested as Messiah, God manifest in the flesh, the end of the law for righteousness, the head of all Jewish order, was He Whom they should have received, Who could give and did give His derived authority to the apostles whom He had chosen. Christ risen, still a Jewish hope, the securer of the sure mercies of David, was He Whom they rejected, in spite of the testimony of the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven. Christ glorified and supreme, the hope to every Jew scattered abroad and every Gentile sinner, is the witness of sovereign grace, whatever the failure in evil. Those in whom it was deposited, Abraham, Moses, Joshua, formed the characteristic of the time in which the Spirit wrought by them. So of the twelve, Christ was the true Vine (not the nominal Israel), and they the branches, deriving their authority from Him as the Patriarchs from Israel; the dispensation thus far taking its entire and orderly character from them.
It was a Jewish, though a Christian thing; that is, it was Jewish in its present order; it began at. Jerusalem; but this ceased as a line when the risen Christ was rejected. The grace of God flowed in through the sandy desert and wilderness of the world, to make green (where it flowed) what it found buried in evil in it, when no watering of the tree which He had planted could cause it to bring forth good fruit to His glory, and its own profit and acceptance.
And as the Spirit went as the wind where it listed, every one that was born of it was, according to the measure of the grace, the witness of the grace that he had received; for God had not lit candles to put them under bushels. Paul became the head and characterizing agent of the dispensation among the Gentiles, not derivative but efficient. Hence God made him so powerful and so tried against derivative mission. “I received it,” says he, “not of men nor by man, but by Jesus Christ, and God the Father Who raised Him up from the dead.” So of the gospel which he preached, he certified them, he was zealous of this point, he neither received it of man, neither was he taught it, but by revelation of Jesus Christ; and he gives this general character of himself, “Last of all He was seen of me also, as one born out of due time,” as an ἔκτρωμα; and this character attaches to the whole dispensation, an extraordinary arrangement and provision, something ektrormatal, born out of due time, for the time present till the earthly system is just ready to be restored, but belonging entirely to the heavenlies, having no earthly derivation or connection in its power with the succession of that order which was first outwardly established. It derived its stream higher up from the same source, though recognizing it in its place (see Galatians 2). If it had such succession, what was all Paul's reasoning about, or why did he take such pains to prove it did not derive itself? Why did the Spirit of God refute the notion of Paul's derivative character when he preached the same doctrine, and held the same truths? It was the grand testimony to the break of successional authority, which was Jewish; the church, as a separate thing for glory, being now set on this earthly footing on its own basis of apprehension of it by the Spirit. (Continued from page 99.) (To be continued.)