James Boyd
No. 7 — The Man of God’s Counsels (Part 2).
As regards ourselves, who are by nature Gentiles, the whole fabric of Scripture authority rests upon the basis of the greatness of the person of Jesus. The answer of my faith to the question: “What think ye of Christ? whose son is He?” must regulate my thoughts regarding this all-important subject. And as a matter of fact, I find that the way in which people do answer this question makes all the difference as to their ideas of inspiration. I never knew a man sound upon the doctrine of the plenary inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, who harbored the least doubt in his mind regarding the divinity of Jesus; neither have I ever known anyone who looked upon Jesus as the Creator incarnate, and who relegated the Bible to a lower place than the Word of God. I am sure it will be found that these two convictions are inseparably connected and that where any one of them is not welcome, the other will refuse to enter.
One who has recently apostatized from the faith of Christianity questions if we ever would have heard of the Old Testament had it not been for Jesus; and though it may be very difficult to say what might, or might not have been, had the light of the gospel of Christ never reached us, we certainly would not have had any real faith in it apart from the Son of God. We have received the Holy Scriptures solely through faith in Him. He has authenticated to us the writings of Moses and the Prophets; and the writers of the New Testament declare their epistles to be the commandments of the Lord (1 Cor. 14:3737If any man think himself to be a prophet, or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things that I write unto you are the commandments of the Lord. (1 Corinthians 14:37)); and that not only the thoughts, but the words in which those thoughts were conveyed to us, were words chosen by the Spirit of God (1 Cor. 2:1313Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual. (1 Corinthians 2:13)).
If these statements of theirs, which lay claim to such authority, are falsehoods, then they are the most wicked falsehoods ever told to men, for they are lies against the living God; and as they concern the most important matters with which the human race has to do, they are the inventions of soul-murderers. These statements of the avowed followers and servants of Jesus are accompanied, on the one hand, with the promise of eternal and unspeakable blessedness for the believer; and, on the other hand, the most terrible consequences of unbelief are announced as hanging over the head of the impenitent rebel; and all these things are placed before the reader in language which is absolutely simple, natural, unstrained, and bearing no resemblance to that which rises from the frenzied imagination of crack-brained zealots. If what they affirm of their words and writings be not true, they were a parcel of wicked and bad men, and they can be believed in nothing. And yet we owe to those men all that we have ever heard of Jesus; and my knowledge of men gives me the most perfect assurance that such a person as He of whom they testified could not be created in the mind of a child of Adam.
His story touches the most tender chords of the human heart, and His moral excellency so mightily appeals to the soul of the faithful disciple, that his most blissful moment is when he is at the feet of this adorable Person as a worshipper. So great is Jesus, so morally different from every other human being, so completely free from all the unworthy motives which govern others, so gracious, guileless, gentle, meek, lowly, compassionate, merciful, self-sacrificing, righteous, holy, harmless, good, so completely unique in all His characteristics, and so unlike man, as we know man, in every solitary way, that some have questioned if such a person ever really existed.
But if His disciples invented Him, they must have traveled for their conception outside the sphere in which the thoughts of men revolve; and if they ever took such a journey, we have to ask ourselves what power it was which carried them into those hitherto unexplored and unknown regions of purest thought, and imprinted upon their imaginations the moral glories with which they decked Him of whom they spoke as the SON OF GOD.
No man can conceive anything beyond himself in a moral way. We all know what children of Adam are, for this is what we are ourselves; we know also the lower creation, for man was made to have dominion over everything beneath him; but who among men knows anything about angels or spirits? With these he is not set in relation, nor has he anything to do with them. In the wisdom of God a boundary has been placed between man and the spirit-world, which it would be well for him to observe. His lawless and inquisitive mind would urge him to find out inventions which would nullify that boundary, and on the other side there are turbulent and wicked spirits who are as anxious to hold converse with him as he is with them; but woe to that soul which intrudes into those invisible and unknown regions.
The partial success with which his efforts seem to be crowned may be an encouragement to him, and embolden him to make still greater efforts to find his way in those regions of darkness, but he is in the hands of creatures in whom there is neither truth nor mercy, and unless God intervene, his damnation is a certainty. “Rapping” may be made on this side of the wall, and this may be answered from the other side; and on certain occasions a venturesome spirit may find means of breaking through altogether, until expelled by a force greater than his own; but these are the works of darkness, and in them poor, foolish, fallen, willful man is the plaything of the devil. He thinks that these creatures are much what he is himself, except that, from the reports which they give of their condition, he imagines them in a state of happiness. He knows nothing of them, nor of the spirit-world which they inhabit, for he cannot go beyond himself.
That man is very wicked is indisputable, none of us knows how very wicked he is; but he is not wickedness itself. From a divine standpoint there is no good in the flesh, but he still bears remarkable traces of the handiwork of God about him. He is like a great ruin in which there is not a sound stone from the foundation to the top, but which bears through all its decay, traces of its former greatness and grandeur. It was this which met the eye of Jesus in the young ruler, whom He is said to have looked upon and loved. Yet, though those traces of primitive grandeur were more noticeable in him than in many others, he preferred his wealth to the Christ of God and treasure in heaven. But those spirits with whom men foolishly seek to have to do, are unmixed wickedness, and they rejoice in the destruction of the creation of God; therefore there is no escape for those who place themselves under their power. But this is rather in the nature of a digression, though I trust it may not be found unprofitable to the reader. I gladly return to the subject on hand.
If Jesus were an invention of those who called themselves His disciples, then His disciples were not ordinary men, for they have certainly gone beyond all that can be understood by men of the world. Leaving this world, after having revealed the Father, Jesus has to say, “O righteous Father, the world hath not known Thee” (John 17:2, 52As thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him. (John 17:2)
5And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was. (John 17:5)); and again, “They have not known the Father, nor Me” (16:3). The Father cannot be known by a mere child of Adam, nor can the second Man be known by the first. There is no analogy between the Father and the world, nor between the man made of dust and the Man out of heaven; both Father and Son are beyond the ken of the men of this world.
The gods of the heathen are by the makers of them induced with passions such as men have; they are morally like men, but with greater strength. And if I take, the heroes of the novelist, pride and self-reliance are the prominent features, for these are the characteristics in which men delight, but not one of them is like Jesus. There is nothing in common between men, as I know man, and the Son of God. It is only in the Bible I can find Him. How is this? If those fishermen of Galilee invented Him, how is it that no one has been able to invent another who can be compared with Him? and how is it that, now that He has been invented, He is so little understood that the greatest minds on earth, even when well-intentioned, cannot reproduce Him? Their frequent attempts have been at best but miserable caricatures. Apart from the holy anointing, the indwelling Spirit of God, no one can know the Father and the Son.
Read the best written life of Jesus ever produced by the uninspired pen of an unregenerate man, and then turn to the four gospels, and see if it is not an emergence out of thick darkness and the domain of death, into marvelous light, and the radiant sphere of everlasting life. As you read the nine beatitudes which introduce the sermon on the mount, you are made to feel as though a door were opened in heaven, and the whole atmosphere about you at once becomes redolent with the perfume wafted from the paradise of God; then pass on until you hear the bells of heaven pealing forth the welcome of a returning scape-gallows, who in broken utterances sobs out his repentance into the gracious ear of a Savior-God, and you must feel that all this is outside the sphere in which the thoughts of men revolve, and that you are made to listen to the pulsations of immortal love.
When you have finished with this, if you ever can finish with it, turn to John 13 and behold the grace of that lowly Son of God, doing the most menial service for His disciples which it is possible for one man to perform for another; and listen to those counsels of grace, wisdom, and holy love which fall from His blessed lips upon the ears of His humble followers; and follow Him until He is done speaking to them, and turns His eyes up to heaven, and pours into the ears of His Father His desires for them, and for all who will believe on Him through their word; and hear Him demand on their behalf, as One who has a righteous claim upon the wealth of power, and grace, and love, which in the Father dwell. Then follow Him to the judgment hall of the Roman governor, and hearken to the leaders of His earthly people howling for His heart’s blood; and follow the crowd to dark Golgotha, and behold Him who made the worlds led as a lamb to the slaughter, nailed to a gibbet as a malefactor, and that between two robbers; and watch to the close, until He is taken down dead, while darkness enfolds the land, and under your feet you feel the earth reel beneath the weight of the corpse of Him who was its Creator, while the rocks are rent and the graves are opened; and if, after witnessing these things, you can flatter yourself that Jesus was a man like other men, or that such a Person either was, or could be, the invention of His disciples, you have a way of judging and arriving at conclusions unknown to me. From the benighted heart of the pagan centurion who had charge of the crucifixion was wrung the confession: “Truly this Man was the Son of God” (Mark 15:3939And when the centurion, which stood over against him, saw that he so cried out, and gave up the ghost, he said, Truly this man was the Son of God. (Mark 15:39)). May the reader’s heart be at least as impressionable.
This is the glorious Person who has authenticated to us the Old Testament, of which He is the Subject, as He is also of the New. As to Israel, the law was given to them by Moses, and accompanied by such visible manifestations of majesty and terror on the part of God, that its divine origin could not by them be called in question; and as to the prophets, their word was proven to be of God by the sanctity of their lives, by its harmony with that which was given through Moses, and by the signs and wonders with which God was sometimes pleased to send it forth; though generally speaking, the prophets who after Moses were used of God to build up the canon of Scripture, do not seem to have been miracle workers. Men like Elijah and Elisha, who were characterized by miraculous manifestations, have not been used to put anything on record, though their words and works and manner of life have been recorded by others. The Jewish Scriptures, were well authenticated to the people.
But we Gentiles were outside all those special dealings of God. We were “aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world” (Eph. 2:1212That at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world: (Ephesians 2:12)). We have come into this rich inheritance through having to do with God revealed in Jesus. He came to His earthly people in fulfillment of the promises made to the fathers, but they rejected Him, and slew Him with the sword of the Romans. God raised Him from the dead, and in answer to the prayer of Jesus from the cross on their behalf (Luke 23:3434Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do. And they parted his raiment, and cast lots. (Luke 23:34)), offered to send Him back to them if they would repent (Acts 3:2020And he shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you: (Acts 3:20)). The stoning of Stephen was their answer to this, and closed the door of hope to the nation; therefore devout men made great lamentation over his death, for in his grave every hope of Israel after the flesh was buried.
Then the Gentiles come up for blessing before God, and the persecutor of the Church is converted and sent to them. The perfect revelation of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God in whom the Jews boasted, came in the Word made flesh, so that believers from among the Gentiles find themselves linked up in the worship of the true God with Abel and all the faithful from his day until the coming of Christ. In this way we have a title to the Old Testament as well as to the New, and to us the two volumes become one Book, both equally inspired of God; the authority of the old established for us in the submission of Christ to every jot and tittle, though a better thing has been brought in by Him, for the Old was but the demand, whereas the New is the supply.
The subtle way in which men who call themselves Christians put before the public theories which are in direct antagonism to the plain statements of Scripture, is a plain proof of their determination to undermine in the thoughts of men whatever bit of confidence they may still possess in the Bible as the Word of God. If they would tell us plainly that they had abandoned Christianity as a useless encumbrance in the pursuit of knowledge, one might be grieved and sorry for them; but they would not be sailing under a false flag, neither would their ways fill one with the same measure of disgust and loathing.
I may be told that these men think there is much in the Scriptures that is really valuable, and therefore they do not feel justified in casting them aside as altogether useless. But if the Bible be not the word of God, and if Jesus be not a divine Person, and if we have no revelation from God, and if the apostles were a set of deceivers and knaves — . But here I am interrupted at once, and reminded that the writers are considered to have been good and true men. Are they? Did Jehovah say to the prophets the things which they spoke to men as His word? Was the burning bush a fact in the life of Moses? Jesus said it was, but was it? Is the Exodus account of the deliverance of Israel from the power of Pharaoh true? What about the passage through the sea? the desert? the manna? the water out of the rock? Whose Son was He who said: “Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness”? (John 6:4949Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead. (John 6:49)).
Did Jesus work the wonders which are recorded of Him? They are recorded by the Evangelist, that we should believe that He is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing we might have life through His name (John 20:3131But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name. (John 20:31)). Is the greatness of this Person built upon a foundation of falsehood, and is it upon a raft of lies against the living God we are to float into the harbor of eternal life? Did these good and true men who wrote the gospels and Epistles concoct the baseless wonders with which they accredit Jesus, and leave them on record encased in a framework of piety as hypocritical as false? This is not what I should expect from men who are good and true.
And yet they do commend themselves to the conscience of all men as both good and true. No one can question that they believed the things which they have put on record. And how could they have been deceived? They were not men easily convinced, and the deeds were not done in a corner. They were neither credulous nor easily imposed upon, and though their persistent unbelief was failure, and had to come under the rebuke of their Lord, it gives additional weight to their testimony, which they gladly bore for His honor and for our eternal blessing, when the last cloud of unbelief at length yielded to the gracious influence of that eternal day, which broke upon their souls as they stood beside the empty grave of Him who could not be holden of death.