When we look into the practical details of the Epistles, and the more carefully we do so, the more constantly, nay invariably, do we find, that it is " the truth" which is used in the cultivation of christian character, and as the sanction and spring of godly behavior.
The Lord, having finished the work that was given Him to do, committed the keeping and the sanctifying of His people to the Father; desiring that they might be kept through His name, and sanctified by His truth. (John 17) This desire the Holy Ghost acts on in the Epistles; for again I say, it is " the truth" which is there always used in the sanctification of the elect, or in the formation of christian character.
We find all the penmen of the Spirit, as in the Epistles of the New Testament, doing this. We find hope, mercies, promises, the law of liberty, the grace that bringeth salvation, the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, and things of like kind with these, used in this sanctification of the elect, all serving to this end, all made to be the instruments for carrying on the husbandry and culture of the saints. And these are parts of " the truth." The fruit of them in the soul and life is righteousness and holiness of truth. (Eph. 4:2424And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness. (Ephesians 4:24).) And so much is this so in the Epistles to the Thessalonians, that there " the coming of the Lord," another part of " the truth," is first employed in forming and cherishing several different features of saintly character, and then for the general cultivation of living, practical Christianity in spirit, soul, and body. (See 1 Thess.)
In this way, and it is full of beauty and interest, we see the desire of the Lord Jesus, that this people should be sanctified by the truth, answered by the Spirit when He comes, in His day, to deal with the elect, and carry on their education, as we speak.
There is no using of law to form christian character. Could we, I ask, admit the thought that the Lord, having ransomed us by Himself, by His own most precious_ blood, and having made us children of the Father,, giving us His own Spirit, the Spirit of the Son, could, after that, commit us to Moses to be kept and educated? What say our souls to such a thought? Are we prepared to admit that the Lord would do this? Nay, and it is nowhere in the Epistles found that He does. The conclusions which our own souls would draw, and the way of the Holy Ghost in the Epistles, harmonize. All is in consistent elevation of thought and purpose. And I may say, it is happy to see, though surely it is what we might expect to see, that the Spirit effectuates the Son's desire, and works according to it.
In the first of these chapters the apostle contemplates the soul, as I may speak, in the presence of the law, and then in the presence of the truth. In the presence of the law the man has his face veiled. He does not affect to be learning one single lesson there. He is abashed rather and confounded. His face is in his hands. The law was commissioned to lay the sentence of death in man as a responsible moral agent, to expose and convict him; and it has answered its end in us, when it leaves us in the sense of utter hopelessness. This was its operation when, at the very beginning, it was announced in the hearing of the camp of Israel, and this was its operation in an individual soul in these last days of the New Testament, as we see drawn out before us in Rom. 7 (See Ex. 20:18-2018And all the people saw the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the noise of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking: and when the people saw it, they removed, and stood afar off. 19And they said unto Moses, Speak thou with us, and we will hear: but let not God speak with us, lest we die. 20And Moses said unto the people, Fear not: for God is come to prove you, and that his fear may be before your faces, that ye sin not. (Exodus 20:18‑20); Deut. 5:22-2922These words the Lord spake unto all your assembly in the mount out of the midst of the fire, of the cloud, and of the thick darkness, with a great voice: and he added no more. And he wrote them in two tables of stone, and delivered them unto me. 23And it came to pass, when ye heard the voice out of the midst of the darkness, (for the mountain did burn with fire,) that ye came near unto me, even all the heads of your tribes, and your elders; 24And ye said, Behold, the Lord our God hath showed us his glory and his greatness, and we have heard his voice out of the midst of the fire: we have seen this day that God doth talk with man, and he liveth. 25Now therefore why should we die? for this great fire will consume us: if we hear the voice of the Lord our God any more, then we shall die. 26For who is there of all flesh, that hath heard the voice of the living God speaking out of the midst of the fire, as we have, and lived? 27Go thou near, and hear all that the Lord our God shall say: and speak thou unto us all that the Lord our God shall speak unto thee; and we will hear it, and do it. 28And the Lord heard the voice of your words, when ye spake unto me; and the Lord said unto me, I have heard the voice of the words of this people, which they have spoken unto thee: they have well said all that they have spoken. 29O that there were such an heart in them, that they would fear me, and keep all my commandments always, that it might be well with them, and with their children for ever! (Deuteronomy 5:22‑29).)
Indeed this is so. With a vailed face we are to listen to the law. We are not, to go to it to learn lessons.
The law is not made for a righteous man; but for the lawless and disobedient. We are to be in the presence of it, that we may be convicted by it, and find out that in our flesh there dwelleth no good thing. A veiled face, again I say, becomes us there. We are not to affect that we learn lessons there, but that we simply take the sentence of death into ourselves; and as we stand before it, cry out, with the camp at Mount Sinai, " Let not God speak with us;" or with Paul, " 0 wretched man that I am." This is its business with me, and this is my answer to it. But if I set myself before it to learn my lesson, and then go away to do my duty accordingly, I am misusing it, and not understanding the vailed face of Moses.
But, on the other hand, in this very same chapter, 2 Cor. 3, we see the apostle with an open, unveiled face before the glory of the Lord Jesus as that glory shines in the gospel, or " the truth;" and there it is we see him learning his lessons. He makes it his aim and business so to stand in the presence of that glory, that he may take off and bear away the image or reflection of it, and be, as he speaks, " a manifestation" of it.
It is there, then, that I find Paul learning his lessons, and not before the law. It is there I find him not with a veiled face, but with an open face; and then in the chapters which follow (2 Cor. 4:55For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake. (2 Corinthians 4:5).) he lets us know some of the lessons he had learned there, and how he was exercising himself in them. Having received mercy, he fainted not, neither did he walk in craftiness, nor handle the word of God deceitfully. This is a sample of the lessons he had learned, and of the teacher that had taught him. The mercy he had received was his teacher, and he had learned not to faint. The light of the glory he had looked at, he goes on to tell us, had shone into his heart and was breaking forth with many a beam of moral brightness and beauty. The life of Jesus was manifest in His body and in his mortal flesh. Did the Lord live for others? The apostle through grace is able to say that he himself fainted not under ministerial labors and sorrows, if others got blessing. Death might work in him, if only thereby life worked in them. There had been a joy set before Christ, in the hope of which He had endured the cross: there was the same, in his way and measure, in the apostle, by reason of which he counted his afflictions to be light. Jesus believed and spoke; Paul also believed and spoke. This surely was learning lessons of the truth. He apprehended also, as he goes on to tell us, the truth of a coming judgment, when all things would be manifested; and by that truth he was led to aim at acceptibility with Christ: He knew the terror of the Lord; and by that he would be an earnest-hearted witness to his fellow-sinners. He knew the death of Christ for sinners; and by that he was ready no longer to live to himself, but to Him who had died for him. And surely all this was sanctification by the truth. This was an exhibition of one who was learning lessons as he stood before the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, and stood there with unveiled face. This was " a manifestation of the truth," as he speaks here.
These chapters (2 Cor. 3-5) are truly wonderful.
And as to the flesh, at the close of them, he tells us, that he knew no man after it. And I ask, if he knew no man after the flesh any longer, how could he know the law any longer? If he had ceased to know man after the flesh, how could he but have ceased to know the law? How could he any longer, though he may have been doing so all his life before, use the law as the former of his character? The law addressed itself to man in the flesh. It was made for man in the flesh, in the old creation. It had connection with Israel, and told Israel of their duties as Israel in the flesh or under the old covenant, standing in moral, independent responsibleness, in title, if they could make it out, of their own doings and deservings. Such a state the apostle refuses to know. " Henceforth know we no man after the flesh," he says, he himself being a new creature, part of the new creation, where " all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to Himself by Jesus Christ." He was in the divine, eternal system of redemption. This is what that man was who, with open face, was beholding the glory of the Lord.
Could such an one, I ask again, take himself back to the law? Could he return to that schoolmaster, to be educated and have his character formed by him? Or could such an one send us, the saints of God, the sanctified in Christ Jesus, there? He could not, and he does not; nor do any of his fellow-apostles, the inspired penmen of the New Testament, the authorized teachers of the Church of God. No. They send us, as I have said, to " the truth," in all its vast, and fruitful, and various provisions, to " the mercies of God," to " the exceeding great and precious promises," to " hope," to " the law of liberty," to " the grace that bringeth salvation," to " the coming of the Lord," and the like. (See Rom. 12, 2 Cor. 7, 2 Peter 1, Titus 2, 1 Thess., James 2, 1 John 4) These are the masters from whom we are to learn our lessons. The day of the schoolmaster is past. Tutors and governors have discharged the office they had under the Father. The time appointed by Him for their dismissal has come long since. We are redeemed from under the law, from them, and from the schoolmaster. We are to be sanctified by the truth; to cultivate " the righteousness and holiness of truth;" to put on the new man; to be led of the Spirit, and this is to be not " under the law." (See Gal. 5:1818But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law. (Galatians 5:18).)
The Holy Ghost, through His servants the penmen of the New Testament, thus answers the desire of the Son which He uttered before the Father ere He left us. " Sanctify them by thy truth." And another illustration of this we get in the Epistle to the Ephesians. The apostle is teaching the saints their high calling of God in Christ Jesus. And he prays or desires for them that the Spirit may give them the understanding of all this, the apprehension and sense of this high calling, that they may know the glory of the hope to which it points, the might of that resurrection-strength which is conducting them on to that hope, the height, length, depth, and breadth of that high, mysterious calling itself, and the surpassing, immeasurable love which is the spring of it all, and which alone can account for it. (See chap. i., iii.) And surely this is desiring their sanctification. To have these prayers for them verified, and realized, and answered in their souls, would surely he their sanctification, their participation in "divine nature;" a result which the law could never have produced; for the best it promised was human righteousness, " our righteousness," as Moses himself speaks. (Deut. 6:2525And it shall be our righteousness, if we observe to do all these commandments before the Lord our God, as he hath commanded us. (Deuteronomy 6:25))
And then in the closing, practical details of this same Epistle to the Ephesians, we find the apostle ever using something of " the truth" to cultivate the tempers and order the ways of the saints be is addressing.
And surely I may add, without asking leave and without fear of contradiction, that the very purpose of the Epistle to the Colossians is to keep saints at school to the truth. The apostle found that the brethren at Colosse were leaving that school for the schools of either the philosophers or Moses; for either the rudiments of the world, or the ordinances of the law; and to keep them still under the culture of the truth, that they might " increase with the increase of God," is his purpose.
What words! Could the law supply the increase of God? What can warrant such language? What can account for it, but the nourishment which the truth provides, and which the Spirit dispenses to the soul?
And now I just ask, if the Lord have ransomed. us by His blood, and given us His own Spirit, the Spirit of adoption, and have committed us to the keeping of the Father, and to the sanctifying of the truth; and if the Holy Ghost have accordingly, by the apostles, led us to the truth to learn our lessons, is it to be said, that God has purposed that we are to be in His presence forever, in righteousness of law? Are we, after all this, to shine in courts of 'heavenly glory, as those who are beautiful in the beauty which Moses would have put upon us? Are we to say, He is not now educating us by the law, but He will put us into the righteousness of the law, therein to appear before Him forever? I cannot receive such a thought-Scripture never inspires it. It would be altogether inconsistent. The desire of the Lord, uttered before the Father, in John 17, and the whole education of the soul under the Holy Ghost in the Epistles, could never find its proper natural result in such a thing as that. It is in the righteousness of God, not in the righteousness of law, we shine. We are in the righteousness of God by faith. It is that righteousness which is imputed to us. It is that righteousness we are, " the righteousness of God by faith." This is the crowning, the perfecting of the whole mystery. All is consistent. We are ransomed by the blood of the Son—we are committed to the keeping of the Father-we are sanctified by the Spirit through the truth-we shine now and forever in the righteousness of God.
In His life on earth the Lord Jesus fulfilled human righteousness. He magnified the law. He presented to God a sheaf of untainted human fruit. Made not only of a woman, but under the law, He presented man, in His own person, to God, as man ought to be under it. For He came not to destroy it, but to fulfill it. But in and by His death He maintained divine righteousness. He glorified God, satisfied all the demands of the throne where righteousness is seated, and vindicated and displayed full divine moral perfection. He presented God to the whole creation in divine moral glory, just and a Justifier, just and having salvation, a just God and a Savior, which is His proper, His desired glory, the glory He will not give to another, and surely will not allow to be taken from Himself. (Isa. 45)
If I, a sinner, have faith in this blood, or death, or sacrifice of Jesus, God accepts me, myself, my person, in His presence, as this very righteousness, the righteousness which that sacrifice has maintained, vindicated, and displayed.