What are the means which God uses in His wisdom to produce intelligent praise and obedience, what the process to produce practical holiness, to make us conquerors of every foe, to deny self in all its workings, even as becomes the Lord's bondmen, to follow and obey the dictates of the Holy Spirit, the desires of the new nature, as it does become the Lord's freemen? Well, God employs moral means. And herein is displayed the wonderful wisdom of God. For those means which produce fruit according to God, where there is life, are a test applied to the lifeless professor by which his true condition is manifested. A double effect is thus produced, the same means bringing the soul born of God into closer communion with Him, and making more manifest the lifeless condition of the other. Even the slips and failures of God's own children are made subservient to the purposes of grace. God forbid that the knowledge of such grace should make us indifferent to holiness. “Shall we sin that grace may abound?” Nay, but we fall before Him and adore, for that unspeakable grace which will not permit that any born of God should so fall as not to rise again. God will maintain His own character, He will keep His own pledged word. And the Lord Jesus, who only said what the Father told Him to say, says, “I will raise him up at the last day.”
Every fruit-bearing branch in the vine is purged that it may bring forth more fruit. “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you and ordained you that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain.” Holiness in heart and life is the fruit God looks for, but it is ordained and must abide. Much purging is needed in order to be fruitful; but God works to make us fruitful, and the Lord Jesus says, “My Father is the husbandman.” The process is not agreeable to the flesh. Paul had to keep his body under else he would have been a castaway. He had been in the third heaven and had heard unutterable things. He might well after that count all else here below as mere refuse. But the abundance of his revelations did not destroy his flesh; when he came out of the third heaven, his flesh was not a whit better than it was before, nay, it was an occasion for the flesh to boast, and so be more hateful than if Paul had never been caught up into the third heaven. It was an extraordinary privilege, and extraordinary means are used by God to keep down fleshly boasting. The Father purges this branch. He puts a thorn in his flesh, sends a messenger of Satan to buffet him. These are the moral means by which God works, and Paul gets a victory over himself. At first there was a fight, and he prayed thrice to have it removed. But when the word came, “My grace is sufficient for thee, for My strength is made perfect in weakness,” then he submitted, and no longer prayed that Lord would remove the thorn.
However interesting it is to trace the ways of faith through the dispensational dealings of God with man, it is of more practical importance to see how sovereign grace is interwoven with the believer's responsibility now. For now it is not only a dispensation of grace as distinct from law, but this present time is specially distinguished by what we may call the minute and careful operation of grace upon each believer, and which is as varied in the detail of its operation, as each individual saint may differ in circumstances, in character, and in need. Evidently while grace always must remain grace, and the believer always remains responsible for faithfulness in walk, the operation of grace must be a moral process in each soul, during which every energy of the new nature is called into active exercise, and where the sustaining power of God is seen in every moment of weakness, His watchful care in every hour of danger, and His strength in every victory. This is seen in the every-day life of believers now,—it is God's way with His saints. And since He has given us the relationship of children, how could He act otherwise? Redemption has brought us into a place where we can say “Abba, Father,” and as Father He deals with us. Perhaps no scripture more explicitly declares the grace of God and the responsibility of the believer, combining and giving each its true place, than Phil. 2:12, 1312Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. 13For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure. (Philippians 2:12‑13), “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling,” —here is the believer's responsibility; “for it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure” —here is God's grace. And both are so combined that the grace of God has the first place, as it must have; for He works in us, then we “will” and “do.”
The word of God assures eternal life to every believer in the Lord Jesus Christ; not a question of attaining eternal life after he believes, but a free and absolute gift at the moment. On the other hand the same word contains warnings, promises and exhortations, as if our salvation depended upon our own diligence. We know that there is a blessed and divine connection between the assurance and the warning. The Word of God is perfect. To sever the one from the other, because of human inability to grasp both, has not only divided believers into two opposing schools—and this is the lesser evil—but it has opposed one part of God's truth to another. This is not faith; in its root it is infidelity. The result is that those who are simply occupied with one side of the truth have evolved principles which are contrary to the plainest statements. For if because of the warnings to believers it is inferred that a soul born of God may after all be lost, what becomes of the assurance of eternal life? If on the other hand because life is eternal, this certainty is used to lessen, if not to deny, the sense of responsibility, then the solemn word of warning is practically set aside, that “without holiness no man shall see the Lord.” So evident is it, that not a word can be omitted, added, or displaced, without marring the truth and injuring our own souls. The simple bow to the whole truth, and to such God gives unshaken faith.
Salvation is a free gift. Holiness also is a gift; none could possess it if God did not bestow it. But our salvation expresses the new and blessed relationship into which we are brought once and forever to God. Holiness is both a gift and a moral quality, and being a quality admits of development and progression, and being a moral quality, it is not impressed upon us by the simple “fiat” of God, but He works in us to will and to do.
The infidel has dared to say that there are contradictions in the Bible. He forgets that he will be judged by that word. But saints sometimes feel a difficulty in discerning the perfect accord between every part of it. This is sometimes due to erroneous teaching, sometimes to insubjection of heart to the Word. Still there are eases when a soul really desires to learn, not doubting the perfectness of the Word, but feeling his own ignorance, and especially when misapprehension of the truth touches communion God, or shakes the assurance of having eternal life, and thus instills a fear that perhaps after all he may be a castaway. But there is no statement so reiterated as that declaring the believer has everlasting life. Statements so plain that the most untaught can understand. The gift of this eternal life, by Him whose life is the light of men, is the theme of the earlier part of John's Gospel. “Whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life,” and again in the same chapter, “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life.” Nor is it only that this blessed truth is frequently repeated, but the farm is varied, as if the Spirit would array the divine assurance in different colored robes, so as to fix it indelibly upon the hearts of His saints. “Never perish,” “Nothing shall take them out of my hand,” “I am the living bread—if any man eat of this bread he shall live forever,” and so of the water He gives, it springs up into everlasting life. We need not ask why eternal life has so full a place in the Gospel of John; it is this Gospel which presents the Son of God, although a man—made flesh—yet the Word that was God. Therefore the source of life, made man for the purpose of imparting life, the eternal life was man's need. “In Him was life and the life was the light of men.” Where a fuller, though brief, development of this great fact than in John 6? And the power and proof of the Lord Jesus being the life will be declared at the last day. It is the Lord saying that He will guard the life so given until the body is fixed in incorruptibility and prepared for eternal glory. There is not even the possibility of losing it, it is not in our keeping, it is hid with Christ in God, He Himself is our life. Can Christ be lost? No more can our life. Wherever the Word of God speaks of the life given to believers it is always with the character of being eternal. Therefore, if any scripture seem to be at variance with this truth, it must be that we are not apprehend the meaning. Who but an infidel would dare to say that Scripture disagrees with itself?
Many true believers when harassed with fears have applied to themselves Heb. 6:4-6, and perhaps there is no other part of the Word which shows how much one may possess and yet not have life. They tasted,—were made partakers of the Holy Ghost but not of life. Where this is not seen Satan takes advantage of our ignorance to make us doubt that which is so plainly stated in the Gospel of John 1 doubt if this Scripture (Heb. 6) ever troubled a mere professor. The dread of having fallen away is rather a mark of having life. The more a lifeless professor had of outward privilege, the further would he be from feeling such a dread.
But what did those spoken of in this chapter possess? They were enlightened and had tasted of the heavenly gift; this does not go beyond the light which reaches the intellect but not the heart: the natural mind is able to make a profession of Christian truth. They had an intellectual taste of the heavenly gift, i.e. the truth of Christ (not Christ, the truth) was received by the mind; it was heavenly truth, for Christ was in heaven, and the revelation of the truth of Christ in heaven is a heavenly gift. It is intellect preferring gospel truth to law.
They were made partakers of the Holy Ghost. This is an advance upon the former, something more than mere mind assenting to revealed truth. There is a power dwelling in the church, the power of the Holy Ghost, and all within the sphere of that power feel and partake of it. But a man may be within the sphere of the power of the Holy Ghost as displayed in the assembly of God, without having the Holy Spirit as indwelling; for the Spirit only indwells where there is life: the power of the Holy Ghost as manifested among saints “builded together for a habitation of God through the Spirit” is different from the Spirit dwelling in each believer as the power of life. When the Holy Ghost on the day of Pentecost filled the house, He was then the Spirit of power as witness of the ascended Christ. When the Lord Jesus breathed upon the disciples, saying, “Receive ye the Holy Ghost,” He was the Spirit of life.
Another characteristic follows, which was peculiar to that time, i.e. to the first age of the church, for then miracles accompanied the Word. They had tasted of the good Word of God, and the powers of the world to come. By a word many had been healed, or raised from the dead. “In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk” said Peter to the lame beggar. “Aeneas, Jesus Christ maketh thee whole.” To the dead Tabitha, he said Arise; but all was God's word, which was seen and enjoyed by all within the sphere of profession. Nor was it less a mark of power or of tasting the good Word of God when Elymas was made blind, it was equally a testimony to the truth of the good word of God. But these miracles are the powers of the world to come. The coming age is the millennium which will be characterized by deliverance from the bondage of Satan. Samples of this delivering power were given by the Apostles. Nor was miraculous energy limited to the Apostles. Whoever preached the Word, the Lord confirmed it by signs following. Living amid such displays of power, and in measure sharing it, those of whom the Apostle speaks, tasted of the good Word of God and the powers of the coming age. Thus we have here enlightenment, tasting the heavenly gift, partaking of the Holy Ghost (as did Balaam, King Saul, and Judas) tasting the good word of God and the powers of the world to come, but not one word of eternal life.
Wonderful as all this is, these advantages enjoyed by man without life, they are but the natural result of a risen Christ, whose power and coming glory were witnessed to, and if we may so say “sampled,” in those early days, and their significance apprehended at least in measure by mere man, who by intellect could distinguish between the grace and glory of the gospel, and the dry hard commands of the law; but all apart from living faith. Having no life, when the testing moment came—as come it will to every professor—all without faith fall away. Therefore Heb. vi. 4-6 shows us a profession which might be renounced, not a life which can be lost. The enjoyment of privilege, the possession of gift, is distinct from eternal life.