NEARLY two thousand years ago the little band of eleven apostles (for Judas, the traitor, had “gone to his own place”) wended their way up the slopes of the Mount of Olives. They walked in the company of the risen Christ.
The mighty work of atonement had just been wrought at Calvary. That stupendous moment in the history of the universe had just taken place — the moment to which all eternity of the past looked forward, and to which the eternity of the future will look back. Christ, the incarnate Son of God, had laid down His life, but He had taken it again, and as the mighty Conqueror had returned from the battlefield where He had annulled Satan, and had vanquished the powers of darkness, triumphing over them in His cross (Col. 2:15).
“By weakness and defeat
He won the meed and crown,
Trod all our foes beneath His feet,
By being trodden down.”
That blessed Christ was both God and Man. He was as truly God as was God the Father and God the Holy Ghost. Never in the history of Christendom was it more necessary than it is to-day to insist upon this fundamental truth of the Christian faith.
A mass of unregenerate men have taken possession of the theological seminaries of the land. They sit in the professor’s chair, and attempt to discuss the mysteries of divine revelation after the fashion of teachers of mathematics or chemistry, or other such-like sciences. With their puny finite minds they would grasp the infinite, ignoring altogether the plain statement of the Word of God that the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God (1 Cor. 2:11).
Before anyone can be a true minister of Christ he must first of all have passed from death unto life (John 5:24). Before he can “know the things that are freely given to us of God,” he must first of all have received “the Spirit which is of God” (1 Cor. 2:12). The absence of this in the present day is, we believe, what produces all the unbelief, the spiritual doubt, the infidelity, we may call it, that is now flooding the land.
Hence we feel called upon to state in no uncertain manner our unchanged and absolute conviction of the truth of the full and essential deity of the Lord Jesus Christ. We repeat, He is as truly God as is the Father and the Holy Ghost. One God only, but revealed in three persons — an infinite truth which baffles the understanding of the finite mind of man; but a truth which the Bible asserts, and which every Christian believes. The man who denies it has abandoned the Christian faith, and forfeited his claim to the name of Christian.
But not only was Jesus God, He was as truly man as He was truly God. Hence, in connection with the glorious truth of the resurrection, it is said on the one hand that having laid down His life He had power to take it again: that is, as a divine Person He laid it down, no man took it from Him; and as a divine Person He took it again, for He had power to do so (John 10:17, 18).
On the other hand, as man He was taken by wicked hands, was crucified and slain (Acts 2:23), and as man He was raised from the dead by the mighty power of God (Eph. 1:19, 20). The rationalist would stumble at this. How can this possibly be? he exclaims. No man took His life from Him, and yet He was slain by men’s hands! But the child of God, born of the Spirit, and indwelt by the Spirit, receives the things of the Spirit of God in simple and unquestioning faith. These things to the unregenerate natural man are foolishness, but to the child of God — the spiritual mail — they are amongst the deep things of God, freely given to us that we might know them, enjoy them, walk in the power of them, and have the heart overflowing with adoration and praise because of them (1 Cor. 2:9-16).
On the memorable occasion to which we have referred (Acts 1), the risen Christ led His disciples outside the walls of Jerusalem and up the slopes of Olivet. There He spoke to them, amongst other things, of the coming of the Holy Ghost. In three ways were they to be affected by this entirely new fact of the Spirit’s presence on earth, fruit of the redemption work of the Lord Jesus. The Spirit had wrought before from creation onwards; He had come upon men both saved and unsaved, making them the vehicles for communicating God’s mind, as, for example, Balaam, Saul the King of Israel, as well as David and the prophets. But never until redemption had been accomplished did He come here to dwell in person. The Holy Spirit’s influences had been felt before, His presence as a divine Person was now to be known when the day of Pentecost had fully come.
In three ways, we repeat, were the disciples to be affected by the presence of this august Person. First, as “the promise of the Father” (Acts 1:4, and cf. John 14, 15, 16), introducing them into the conscious relationship of sons.
Second, as the baptism of the Holy Spirit, introducing them into the unity of the body of Christ (Acts 1:5, and cf. Cor. 12:13).
And thirdly, as the power for service and testimony (Acts 1:8, 2:1-13).
Every Christian, then, is a son of God, and has the Spirit of adoption in his heart whereby he cries, Abba, Father; every Christian is a member of the body of Christ, and is livingly united by the Spirit to his exalted Head in heaven, as well as to all his fellow-Christians, as members of the body of Christ on earth; and every Christian is a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ, and is endued with the power of the Holy Ghost for that service in whatever direction it may lie, whether amongst the saints of God as pastor and teacher, or toward the world as evangelist, or in any other way.
Having spoken to His disciples these things, and while they beheld, the blessed Lord was taken up. A cloud received Him, and hid Him from their gaze. Seen but a moment before, He was now out of their sight. A cloud had intervened — a cloud, and nothing more.
With steadfast eyes they look toward heaven. Had they not seen Him “as He went up?” Was He not then in heaven? Yes, verily, and there in heaven He has been ever since that day of all-absorbing memory.
But, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel. Angelic messengers were these, who, fresh from heaven’s courts, where they had that very moment just witnessed the entrance there of the glorified Redeemer, now impart to His wondering disciples the joyful tidings that “this same Jesus which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go into heaven” (Acts 1:11).
This blessed truth of the coming of the Lord we desire once more to bring before our readers.
A. H. B.
(To be continued.)