Is "our Gospel," as the Apostle calls it (2 Cor. 4:33But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost: (2 Corinthians 4:3)), known in this day? It seems irrelevant, if not presumptuous, to ask such a question in this great Evangelical day; and yet I am assured that, if any one will give patient attention to the subject as I may be allowed to set it before him, he will agree with me that it is either very rarely or indifferently known.
The first thing to be understood is the nature of the distance between God and the sinner. Now, the distance is of a double character: there is the distance on God's side, and there is the distance on man's side. The distance on God's side is on account of sin, as He says to Cain, " If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted?" Sin and its penalty alone caused the distance between God and man. Sin was the barrier. When Abel owned the ground on which God alone could meet him, the distance on God's side ceased, and He counted Abel righteous. Man had sinned, and his sin raised a barrier between God and him. If the sin were removed, and the penalty borne, there would be an end to the distance on God's side. But man was also at a distance, and the character of his distance was not only that he had done wrong, which wrong he desired to atone for, and which, if atoned for, he would be assured that the distance into which he had fallen would be at an end, but he had imbibed from Satan a wrong idea of God-he was " an enemy in his mind by wicked works;" the mind of the flesh was now enmity against God. Unless we know the nature of the distance to be repaired, we never can know the nature of the reparation. The distance on God's side cannot be repaired unless sin be removed and its penalty borne, and the distance on man's side cannot be repaired unless man gets a new mind With respect to God, and consequently a new nature.
Let us briefly examine how the distance occurred, and what it involved. Man was set in the garden of Eden as subject to God, surrounded with everything that could indicate the thought and care of God for him. Here Satan, the power of evil, entered, and suggested to man that, though so enriched with every natural blessing, yet that God had interdicted the eating of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, because it would greatly advance man. This idea man accepted through Satan, and acted on it, even that he could do better for himself than God could do for him. He took thereof, and did eat He did so in distinct distrust of God. The power of God was not denied; but the love of- God to use His power was utterly ignored; and hence enmity followed unbelief; for the bitter feeling was engendered that God had that power which, if man had, would enable him to do what he ( in the spirit of his mind, now poisoned by Satan) was conscious God would not do for him. Now, this distance involved on God's side the judgment of death, and on man's side all that terrible sense of impending doom and the uncertainty of life which hangs around the neck of every man in fallen nature. The penalty of sin is death; and, while death is the penalty, no amount of natural blessing-not even the return to Eden-could assuage the terrible fear which at times, or at any time, may invade, the heart of man. Nay, rather, while the accumulation of comforts panders to man's necessity and ambition, they provoke, alas! the deepest anguish in the apprehension of losing them.
How the distance is repaired is now the great inquiry. It is evident that three ways are open to repair an ordinary distance between any two. First, as I am the offender, it may be repaired by my own means; secondly, by means given to me; thirdly, by the one whom I have offended, according to his own way and mind. As to the first, it is plainly the duty of the offender to repair the distance which his offense has caused, if he be able to do so of his own unassisted ability and means. This Cain tried, and he was not successful, neither could he be, because, the penalty on him being death, he could not ward off the penalty unless by a substitute bearing it. He had not a true idea of the nature of the distance. If he could have repaired the distance without death or discharge of the penalty, there would have been no righteousness; for righteousness is the exaction of the penalty. The one on whom the penalty of death lay could not exonerate himself from it by any means in his power. He had no second self, every way equal to him, and yet not liable, that he could present to God as a substitute to bear the penalty under which he lay; and if he had, he could not have repaired the distance on his own side, which required in him an entirely new mind with reference to God. So that the idea of man repairing the distance from his own side, and by his own means, is at once dismissed as untenable and impossible.
Now, the second mode is, that God may grant to me, the offender, means whereby I may repair the distance. This mode Abel and those who presented offerings to God in a measure exemplify. The animal offered-the life of it-all really came from God, and was not charge- able with man's sin. It typified what was required, in order that man might be justified before God. But, after all, the blood of bulls and goats could not take away sin; and the relief which accrued to the believing worshipper was evidently from his faith in how God would accept, and deal with, a sinner, through a sacrifice acceptable to Him. The offerings availed nothing for many. The believing Israelite was carried by faith to see God dealing in sacrifice. The principle of faith in himself being entirely new, gave him, according to its force, a true sense of how the distance was repaired. The blood of bulls and goats did not take away sin; still souls, while, through the type, they had a sense of God's righteousness, rested in His mercy.
Now, the question is, May what was done by a believer aforetime with the type be done with the Anti-type?-i.e., Can a believer now present Christ to God as his atonement, and thus find peace with God? for this truly would be the second mode. In making this inquiry, it is important to see that the type could only be what suited-the believing Israelite's need. It could not, as a type, be either sufficient to remove the distance on his side or on God's. He expressed in it mainly what would meet God, and remove the distance on God's side; but, as a mere type, it could not do so really. It did not take away sin. " Burnt offerings and offerings for sin," it is written, "Thou wouldest not." The type merely declared to faith what was required from man to counteract the distance which was on God's side toward man. A declaration of what was required helped faith; but it only the more imperatively engaged and bound the worshipper to the necessity and value of a true- and sufficient sacrifice. The distance on man's side was overborne and set aside according to the extent of the faith which engaged the soul With God, for that faith was entirely new and of God, and not of unbelieving man in his own nature.
But the Antitype-Christ-cannot be used after this manner. No one can offer Him; He offered Himself to God. No one can present Him to God; He presented Himself. So that it is plain it cannot be with Him as with the type; for the type set forth what was required of me. Christ has done what was required. I do not set it forth. That which was required on God's side is not now required, for it has come. It is done, and done without any intervention on my part. God, so to speak, could not give me the means of repairing the distance between Him and me on His side; for then I must offer Christ and present Christ, which evidently I cannot do, seeing that both are already done. But some may say, Could I not present His merits and blood to God, and thus obtain forgiveness and peace? I may have faith in it as presented; but I could not present it, because that has been already done. Neither under the law did the worshipper ever present the blood; the priest always presented the blood. But in the Antitype-Christ-He has both offered Himself (and, therefore, I cannot offer Him) and He has presented to God His blood, which cleanseth from all sin (and, therefore, I cannot present it). Hence we see that means are not given me of God to repair the distance between Him and me; and we must perceive the fitness of this. Firstly, because I cannot truly estimate the nature of the distance. How could /tell God's estimate of sin? It would be making
God's claim on man, which is law, the measure and limit of Christ's work. God alone can measure it, and His will, and not law, was the measure and limit of Christ's work. Secondly, my distance is only consciously repaired, as I, in a new mind, am engaged in the knowledge of. God as He is in Himself. If the means to repair the distance were placed in my hands, and the distance on God's side thus repaired, the distance on my own could not be, without the revelation in me of what God is in Himself. Now, as the distance is not repaired by means of my own, or by means given to me of God, it remains that it must, if repaired at all, be repaired by God Himself, and entirely from His side, both as regards me and Himself. The Gospel-the "good tidings "-is, that it is repaired already. If not, there is no Gospel, no good tidings to me, a lost one, nor is there good tidings for the heart of the " blessed or happy God " (1 Tim. 1:1111According to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which was committed to my trust. (1 Timothy 1:11)). The Gospel is, that it is repaired on God's side. Man, the offender, ought to have repaired it; but he had no means of his own, neither could he apply means given to him of God to do so, if there were any; for to use means provided of God would imply, on the part of man, an innate readiness and inclination, together with a true apprehension of God which we know man in his alienated mind and nature could not have. God, therefore, repairs the distance from His own side. And why? Because He is, love! That is the spring of it, and the only way to account for the fact. He said that there was " none righteous-no, not one." Then "His own arm brought salvation." " He laid help on one that. was mighty." Man had failed in innocency-under every trial had he failed; and the more so, the more gracious the trial. Whether after the Deluge or in Canaan, the alienation of man's heart and mind was only more and more exposed and betrayed. He had done nothing of himself which God had required. If God recognizes man as man on the earth, it must be by claim. Righteousness demands it. Therefore, law came in on those whom God. recognized, or who sought recognition. Under law, there is a sense of recognition; hence the enmity and repugnance in the more religious, as seen in the chief priests in the Gospels, against the doctrine which establishes grace at one and the same moment, setting aside claim or law, and, together with it, man in himself, which law had recognized. Man prefers the claims which he cannot meet, because it recognizes himself, to the grace that eternally blesses him, because it, by making no claim on him, ignores him. Christ was crucified because there was an end of man as man. There was at once the end of him before God, and the judgment of him as he was. If Jesus Christ was set forth crucified, it plainly declared, to any one not senseless, that there was now no ground for that for which He was crucified. If it were crucified in the Son of God, as bearing the judgment on it, surely it could not then be called up again; it must remain a carat mortuum (a dead thing). The great and simple thing for me to apprehend and abide by is this, that God, the blessed and happy God, repairs the distance between Himself and the sinner, and the sinner and Himself, entirely from His own side, and from His own love, which of itself dictates to Him what He will do. It is in keeping with this that the Son says, " I come to do Thy will "-a " body halt Thou prepared me." At this juncture, man having been proved a wreck, lost and abandoned in the sight of God, the Son says, " I come to do Thy will." Man in himself had done none of it, and God cannot deal with unrighteousness. Not only what God required-i.e. law-but everything worthy of God, or consistent with His nature, is righteousness. My righteousness is as nothing in comparison to what is comprised in His righteousness. His righteousness could not be established among men, unless by one who could, in Himself, maintain everything worthy of God and consistent with His nature, in addition to everything required of man (which latter the law only referred to). Hence the Son came, and was born of a woman, and took upon Himself the likeness of flesh, in order to establish this righteousness for God; for, if this righteousness for God were established, then God's heart would be at liberty to flow out to every one believing in His Son, who is the channel of His grace. This the Son did. He says: " I have glorified Thee upon the earth; I have finished the work which Thou gavest me to do." He received the judgment that was against man in His own body on the tree; and the moment He bowed His head and gave up the ghost, the veil of the temple was rent from the top to the bottom. There was an end to the distance on God's side. He could now, in the strength of His own righteousness, express His heart as He desired to express it. It was not merely what he had required of man; that was the law; but all that was worthy of Himself had been maintained by the Son, as man bearing the judgment against man. God's love now has nothing to check or delay it, and it can flow out with a righteous warrant to express its amazing interest and desires towards us, poor lost ones. The thief can be taken from the cross of judgment into the third heaven; the half-dead wanderer from Jerusalem is now set on His own beast-the very power which wrought in Christ. It is the knowledge of the love of God which can now only explain what God will do for His lost one returning home, or what is the manner of God's acceptance of him, or thought about him. The sinner awakened has the sense of his Deed; but his need is not the measure by which God deals to him. The measure is His own love. Its thoughts and ways infinitely surpass those of necessity! The Father runs to accept the returning one; falls on his neck and kisses him; love has triumphed, and love rules. The returning one, like a babe with regard to its mother's caresses, may be unable to interpret the manner of the love which greets him; but, as he matures, he learns, by the love he enjoys, to apprehend the nature of the reception first accorded to him. It is God's love acting, without let or check, towards the objects of it, on the ground of righteousness established by the Son of God in manhood down here. Can we comprehend what a relief, as I may say, it was to the heart of God, when righteousness was so established, that His love in its own mighty volume—in the strength of His eternal righteousness-of all that was worthy of Himself and consistent with his nature-could flow forth to His lost children, not only as they needed, but as it, of itself, liked to express itself? I speak not of my need; I allow it not to suggest, when I am conscious of a love acting for me far and away beyond my need.
God is just or righteous now to justify the ungodly, the distance from His own side being entirely removed; and in His doing so, two things are declared-one, that He has repaired the distance, in a manner suited to Himself, seeing that He did it Himself; secondly, that, in doing it Himself, He showed the sinner that He on His side desired (0, how much!) that the distance, and that which caused the distance, should not continue. But not only so, for this alone would not be available to us; but He also repairs the on Our side-. The manner of His love is, that we should be called the born of God. " Of His own will begat He us by the word of His truth." " Which were borne not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." " By which will we are sanctified." The natural man knoweth not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness to him. If we were left as we are by nature, we never could avail ourselves of the redemption accomplished in Christ; "but God who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us, when we were dead in sin, bath quickened us together with Christ." "By grace are we saved through faith, and that not of ourselves, it is the gift of God." We are born from above. All comes anew from God. God is free to act in the boundlessness of His love. He is righteous to do so-to me, a sinner; for judgment has been borne by His Son, who has done all His will; and He was made sin for us; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. I am, as a believer in Christ, a new creation. It is Christ that liveth in me. If I have not the Spirit of Christ, I am none of His. The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. I am on entirely new ground. Instead of the natural mind, which is enmity against God, I have received now the mind of Christ, and Christ is my life. All comes out entirely new for the from God, and as His love would confer it. Every one in Christ is a new creation. It is not so much that this is necessary, as many understand the saying of the Lord to Nicodemus. Of course it is necessary, but it is the love of God, that, having removed the penalty of sin under which we lay, and having now shown how He can be just; He of Himself begets us unto Himself by the word of His truth. He not only proclaims that all things are ready; but that He is free to open out all the treasures of His love; and therefore, that the message is, "All things are ready, come to the Supper." But not only this, He compels the outcasts to come in. God in a remarkable and distinct way draws us into the light; sometimes as the prodigal, by a long and severe famine in this evil world; and when-hope is lost, and there is the consciousness that there can be no room for hope; the light penetrates the darkness, and the voice Hof the Son that quickens the dead is heard. God works in the soul. " Of His own will." He begets, as Paul says, " When it pleased God to reveal His Son in me." There is a new being formed of God; born of water and of the Spirit. God's word is that which is the quickening element. It is by it that we are born again; "not of corruptible seed (the first Adam), but of incorruptible, by the word of God which liveth and abideth forever, " And this is the word which by the Gospel is preached unto you." And, therefore, in God's mercy it is preached abroad, as one would sow seed, in order that according to God's purpose, it may light where He would have it light. He prepares the soil and He sends the seed; His distinct gift is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. He can now give as His heart loves to give! He can give His own life; eternal life in His Son, who enabled Him in righteousness to act out His love to us lost ones. He works out all anew, so that the most abandoned now hears that " he which drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst." " This is God's doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes." The heart of God is set free, and it is free to express itself according to its boundless greatness. And therefore it makes us a new creation in Christ Jesus; gifted with the life that was with the Father, now mine through the Son who is my life; I am entirely on new ground; the only ground that there was is condemned; and the judgment of it borne by the Son of God (become a man), and there ended it; but having ended it by bearing the judgment on it, gave liberty to God to express His own heart in grace as well as in righteousness to the sinner, and this He does by making the sinner a new man in Christ Jesus; so now it is, Christ liveth in me, and I have through the gift of God, eternal life in the Spirit; fellowship with the Father and His Son Jesus Christ.
Paul is the pattern or outline of all this, and therefore he calls it " our Gospel;" and " if it be hid, it is hid to them who are lost, in whom the god of this world bath blinded the minds of them who believe not, lest the light of the Gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image of God should shine into their hearts."
When the Son carne from heaven there was sung, " Glory to God in the highest." The will of God was about to be done on earth, and for man, a Savior is born. When Jesus had finished the Father's work He was received up into glory; and now when there remained no acceptance for Him from Israel on earth, the heavens having opened ft, take up Stephen, they will not be closed again. The light of the glory is shed forth for the lost one down here; and, hence it arrests Saul of Tarsus, in order that, as he says, " in me first Jesus Christ might show forth all long-suffering, for a pattern to them which should hereafter believe on Him to life everlasting" (1 Tim. 1:1616Howbeit for this cause I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might show forth all longsuffering, for a pattern to them which should hereafter believe on him to life everlasting. (1 Timothy 1:16)).
God by the light of His glory arrests him; silences in a moment all his pretensions as under law, for as under law the glory would have consumed him. But instead of " blackness and darkness and tempest" (so that one " could not endure that which was commanded"), it is a Savior which is revealed to him in the glory. Everything on earth and of nature is shut out in the dazzling light of the glory, above the brightness of the sun; and there he sees Jesus, and there he is told that he should be a minister and a witness of those things which he had seen. What did he see.? Jesus in the glory of God, identifying Himself with His suffering saints down here. In the glory there was a Savior. God then had no claim against a sinner brought nigh, for in His own glory there reigned perfect satisfaction for sin, and for what was due to it. God makes this known to Saul of Tarsus; and that in the light of the glory (which excludes everything of man, while giving the soul of the sinner, through God's revelation, sure ground of standing in His presence, for there was no charge there); there was a Savior there, and there only; the glory testifying of His finished work.
The more I am in it, the more do I know how at ease I can be there, because there I can only know God's unbounded satisfaction about sin-through Jesus my Savior. God's satisfaction enters my heart in the glory; hence it is the " Gospel of the glory of Christ." God is satisfied about sin, the glory tells of His satisfaction. His being there convicts the world of sin, because they believe not, and of righteousness because He is there; and the moment I am there I understand the Gospel in its true greatness and grandeur. It is there I know God's satisfaction about sin. It is there that the more I am, the more at home I get, because there I am not only in the sense of God's satisfaction about sin, but God's new work and revelation in my soul enables me to comprehend what is there presented to me. I am in spirit with Jesus there, for there Jesus is; and there, though I may not know it, my first acquaintance with Him was formed. If God's Son be revealed in me, He is revealed in me where He is. He is in the glory now, a glory that is full of and charged with God's satisfaction about sin, in and through His beloved Son. He reveals Him to me as my Savior; the light of the glory reaches me. Any light that reaches me from God is from the glory, and as it does, it tells me of how God is in the glory. Jesus is there, and the more I am with Him in it, the more I am in God's satisfaction about sin; and the more also I am in the sphere where His love can conduct me into the circle of His delights, and make me know how His joy abounds in my participating with Him in the fullest richest circle of His thoughts and purposes;—eating with Him of the fatted calf.
Then and there I learn what the Gospel is, the Gospel of God; "our Gospel." The glory which excludes everything of man changes me into what suits itself. I am changed from glory to glory as by the Spirit of the Lord. All is new, all is divine; and I " press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus," according to Paul, my pattern.
The Gospel then is not merely salvation, or even the richest, fullest salvation; it is a disclosure to me of the heart of God, and of the delight He takes in having me in adoring nearness to, and fellowship with, Himself, in the deepest and most secret purposes of His heart. May we learn to apprehend the Gospel, in order that we may more truly respond to the purpose of God in His love, in preparing and securing such wondrous blessedness for us in accordance with the joy of His own heart. Amen.