Heb. 11:4040God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect. (Hebrews 11:40) is treated at considerable length in both papers. In the former it is first sought to be shown that the passage says nothing in favor of any special place being assigned to saints of the present period; and then it is used as a positive argument for the equality of the Old Testament saints with these. The second paper still further considers the passage in both points of view. But the doctrine of the one paper seems to us utterly subversive of that taught by the other. The writer of the January article reasons from what he judges “the better thing” provided for us to be; but in April we are told that the passage “does not teach that God had provided something better for us than for them.” The explanation of “the better thing” in the first article we are quite at a loss to understand. First, it is urged “that the apostle was speaking of what these Old Testament saints were yet to obtain (the italics are not ours) in connection with us and along with us.” Then it is argued that “they were not without us to be made perfect (i.e., thoroughly set at rest from guilt, and introduced into full confidence toward God”). Are we then really to suppose that these departed saints have yet to obtain rest from guilt, and full confidence toward God? No such depreciation of Old Testament saints as this can justly be charged on such as hold them to be distinct from what scripture calls “the church.”
The second paper proposes a new version of the passage altogether. “But if the central clause be placed, as it should be, in a parenthesis, and if the ellipsis be supplied, then all appearance of ambiguity is removed. These all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise, (God having made a better provision for us than that, viz., that they should at present receive the promise,) in order that they, apart from us, should not be perfected.” This is indeed a bold proposal. To insert the demonstrative pronoun “that,” and then explain it, as though it were a part of the passage, inserting the explanation also, as a mere supplying of an ellipsis, is to use a liberty with God's word by which it might be made to say anything. In this instance it is used to make the passage say the very opposite of what is said by the words actually found in the Greek. But let us hear what is said in favor of the change.
“The substantive instruction of the passage is contained in the first and last clauses they received not the promise, in order that they might not be perfected apart from us. (χωρὶς ἡμπῶν.) The central parenthetic clause does not teach that God had provided something better for us than for them (that would contradict the word χωρὶς, apart from); but it teaches that he had provided for us a better thing than to allow that they should be perfected apart from us. The word χωρὶς (apart from) could not on the other supposition, have been used; for if we had the calling and glory of the Church, and they not, then, indeed, they and we should be perfected apart one from the other, the very thing which this verse declares to be impossible.” On all this we remark: 1. that to read the central clause parenthetically is a purely gratuitous change, uncalled for by anything in the passage, which makes good sense just as the translators have left it. 2. To read it parenthetically creates the ellipsis which the writer supplies, and which exists not as the passage stands. 3. The construction of the passage is against the reading the central clause as a parenthesis. The words περὶ ἡμπῶν and χωρὶς ἡμῶν so connect the two phrases, ( “a better thing for us,” “that they without us,”) as to make the latter dependent on the former. But if so, how could the former be part of a parenthesis? 4. So far is χωρὶς from excluding the idea of their perfection (that of Old Testament saints) being different from ours, that it is used in passages where similar differences are undeniably recognized. “Without (χωρὶς) me, ye can do nothing.” Does the word here exclude all difference of dignity or glory or power between Christ and His disciples? “The man is not without (χωρὶς) the woman in the Lord.” Does this mean that they are in all respects equal? Why, the whole drift of the passage is in proof of the man's superiority. That is, the word is used in scripture in a sense quite different from that which this writer wishes to fix upon it absolutely in the passage under consideration.
As to the passage itself, and its bearing on the question in debate, so far from its being “the text most relied on to prove that the Old Testament saints are” not included in the glorified Church, we know of no work in which it is so urged. There may be such works, but they have not fallen under our notice. We ourselves have long hesitated as to whether by “the better thing provided for us,” was meant our present dispensational privileges, or some special place of future glory, and have never therefore relied on the passage as a proof of the latter. But the present discussion inclines us, more than previously, to the latter view. The distinction made but a few verses farther on between “the spirits of just men made perfect,” and “the Church of the first-born ones which are written in heaven,” certainly seems to teach that the class denominated “spirits of just men,” will, when made perfect, which is only in resurrection, be still distinct from “the church of the first-born ones written in heaven.”
The January article closes with a series of numbered paragraphs, which, after all that has been considered, may be very briefly dispatched.
“Does the Church not mean the whole body of the redeemed?” The answer is, this is precisely the question at issue, to which these articles give an affirmative, and we a negative reply. Neither therefore can assume their own view, and reason from it, as the writer here does.
If the redeemed all form Christ's body, then all of them of the Old Testament, even as of the New, shall rise to the same glory.” Yes, but first prove that “Christ's body” and “the redeemed” are interchangeable terms. Christ is never spoken of as head of the body except as risen and ascended. If He is, let the passages be brought forward. To produce Isa. 26:19,19Thy dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust: for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead. (Isaiah 26:19) and thus represent Christ as the head of a “dead body” (!) is the plainest possible confession that no texts more to the purpose could be found by the writer, in the Old Testament.
3. “The Queen in gold of Ophir” is represented by the writer of Psa. 45 as the bride of “the king.” The psalm consists of things he had made “touching the King.” No doubt there are principles in common between such scriptures as the Song of Solomon and this psalm, and those in the New Testament which treat of the Church's bridal relation to Christ. Much found in the one may thus, for uses of edification, be applied to the subject of the other. But, still, the subject is distinct. Jerusalem is the King's bride. It is of her that Ezek. 16, Isa. 54, and Hos. 2 treat. It is to her people that it is said, “Thy maker is thine husband;” of her land that it is written, “thy land shall be married;” and of herself; “as the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice over thee.” But the Church is “the bride, the Lamb's wife.” Betrothed and affianced to Him, during His rejection by Israel and the earth—the lone companion of that rejection, and inheritor of the griefs of which, as the Father's faithful witness and servant, He drank so full a cup—it is in that character of heavenly grace in which alone she has known and confessed her unseen and absent Lord, that she is to be associated with Him in the glory, in that day when the glory shall be revealed.
The remarks on the transfiguration take for granted that to be glorified with Christ is equivalent to being “of the church, or bride.” But there is nothing said either of the body or bride of Christ in the scripture accounts of the transfiguration. It was “the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” of which the favored three beheld a specimen in the holy mount; and we know of none who question that Old Testament saints will, equally with those who compose the Church, be raised and glorified at Christ's coming.
The reasoning on the types needs no comment, as there is not even the pretense of giving scripture authority for the application of them made by the writer. Many seriously dispute that the cherubim were types of the Church.
6. The psalms are referred to in proof that Old Testament saints are to rise in the first resurrection, and to reign as kings in the millennial age. Neither of these positions should we for a moment think of disputing. But when it is said that “the general import and drift of such passages evidently is, that these saints were led by the Holy Spirit to look for the same honor as we of the New Testament Church are led to expect,” it does but mournfully evince how this system of interpretation reduces what it calls “the New Testament Church” to the standard of Old Testament truths.
We turn now for a moment to the second paper that we may not omit noticing anything it contains. Its leading arguments have been already considered in their connection with, or contradiction to, the previous article. It opens by denouncing the doctrine which distinguishes between the Church and the Old Testament saints, as “strange,” “novel,” “disastrous in its consequences,” and “necessarily affecting that which the scripture reveals respecting the redemption that is in Christ.” These are heavy charges, indeed so heavy that they ought not to be made unless supported by the most substantial proofs. What then are the proofs by which such charges are supported in the present instance? The only proof alleged is a most glaring misrepresentation of what the question at issue is; and the only evidence brought forward in support of the charge is a quotation which completely repels it. But our readers shall judge for themselves. The question is stated in the following terms: -
“Surely there can be no more important question than this—what is it that gives title of entrance into the Church and all the Church's blessings? Is it not simply and only the redemption that is in the blood of Jesus?” Undoubtedly it is; and woe to the man whose hopes are based on any other foundation. But is it on the question of the Church's title to glory that this writer is at issue with those whom he opposes? God forbid! They acknowledge, at least equally with him, that redemption in the blood of Christ is the only ground on which any of Adam's race can be entitled to a place in glory. But it is a pure fallacy of this writer to suppose, because the title is the same, that there can be no diversities of glory among those who all, and all alike, owe their blessedness to the blood of Christ, and to that blood alone. Has God ceased to be a sovereign because in His grace He has given Christ to accomplish redemption by His blood? Is the Holy One so limited by His own purely gratuitous provision for man's recovery, as to be precluded by it from bestowing various dignities on those whose only title to anything but perdition is the precious blood of Christ, and the grace which places its value to their account? Let this writer account for the immeasurable difference between the glorified saints and the saved inhabitants of the millennial earth throughout the thousand years; let him show how this diversity can consist with the blessedness of both being based solely on the value of Christ's blood; and let his explanation be what it may, it will serve equally to show how any distinction that God may please to make between one portion of the redeemed and another, throughout eternal ages, is consistent with the same blessed fact.
Besides, what becomes of the millennial saints They either form part of the Church or they do not. If they do, then all the arguments about the Old Testament saints having part in the first resurrection, and reigning with Christ go for nothing; for here are myriads of the Church who evidently do not share in either. If they do not form part of the Church, then all the reasoning about redemption is null; for here are saints redeemed by Christ's blood, who instead of constituting the Church, are living on the earth, while the Church reigns in glory with her Lord.
But the article under review asserts dogmatically that “the heavenly city is a symbol of corporate condition. It represents the glory of the Church as a whole.” “As a whole,” let it be remembered: and so positive is the writer on this point, that he adds, “Not to belong to it is spoken of as equivalent to perdition.” Now when is it, we ask, that the Church answers to this symbol of its glory “as a whole?” Is it only in the post-millennial, eternal state? Or does not the detailed description of it, as shown to John by the angel, exhibit it in connection with the millennial earth? Are not the leaves of its tree of life for the healing of the nations? And do not the nations [of the saved] walk in the light of the heavenly city. Still “it represents,” says this writer, “the glory of the Church as a whole.” Clearly, then, the saved nations of the millennial earth do not form part of the Church: and the conclusion drawn by others as to Old Testament saints, and condemned by him as affecting fundamental truth, follows necessarily, as to millennial saints, from what he himself affirms.
If it should be pleaded that they belong to the Church prospectively, that though not forming part of the city—the Bride—during the thousand years, they are afterward to be incorporated with it, we answer, that such a plea can never be admitted. First, because it contradicts the writer's own assertion that “the heavenly city represents the glory of the Church as a whole.” Secondly, because it contradicts scripture. Is it not at the beginning of the thousand years that it is said, “the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready?” But how “ready,” if myriads who are to form part of her are yet unborn? And when our Lord says, not of His disciples only who surrounded Him, but of all who should believe on Him through their word, “the glory which thou gavest me I have given them: that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them and thou in me, that they be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them as thou hast loved me,” to what epoch does He look forward for the accomplishment of these things? Are they accomplished in the millennial period, when the millennial world beholds in the heavenly city the proof that the Father has loved the saints composing it as He loved His Son if so, the nations of that period are not part of the Church, for it is already “made perfect in one;” and the nations are spoken of as “the world,” distinct and apart from the heavenly saints. And if it be said, in accordance with the objection we are examining, that not till the end of the thousand years will the words of our Lord be accomplished, that the millennial saints are included among those to whom He gives the glory which has been given to Him, and who are finally to be made perfect in one, where in that case is “the world of which our Lord speaks, as knowing by the glory of the Church how the Father has sent the Son and loved the Church as He loved the Son? No “such world” will exist in the eternal state, at least according to the system we are considering: and if its existence could be supposed, it would subvert the system altogether. It is, in fact, untenable. It contradicts itself, and contradicts God's word; and the writer of this second article argues as though he would conceal its inherent weakness by the severity with which he censures the views with which his own system stands contrasted.
Having misstated the point in debate, by representing it as a question between him and others as to the title of entrance into the Church, he proceeds to charge his opponents with excluding Old Testament saints from “the great result of redemption altogether," and asks, “And what is the ground of this supposed exclusion? Abraham and the Old Testament saints, say they, are to be excluded, because they did not receive, whilst on earth, the Holy Spirit in the same manner as we have received it who have lived since Pentecost. Such is the doctrine of the appended passage. (A passage extracted from “Plain Papers,” &c.) Thus it is taught that our title to belong to the Church of God in glory does not depend on that which we are in Christ, but on that which we are in the Spirit.” Would the reader credit it, that the extract from “Plain Papers” which is thus stigmatized, is one in which the following sentences occur? After mentioning Abraham, Moses, and others, as men of faith and referring to the brightness of their devotion and obedience, it affirms, “They were quickened by the Spirit beyond all doubt. By virtue of the foreseen sacrifice of Christ, they were forgiven and saved. They will all have part in the first resurrection and partake of heavenly glory. There can be no question as to any of these things...... The church shares these things, life, justification, resurrection, and heavenly glory, with the saints of Old Testament times; but what constitutes the Church is something distinct from and beyond all these things. It is the actual living unity with Christ and with each other of those who, since Christ's resurrection, are formed into this unity by the Holy Ghost come down from heaven. Was there anything like this in Old Testament times?” (Plain Papers, p. 83.) Can the reader see in this extract any justification of the charges above quoted from the “Quarterly Journal?” Will the writer in the “Quarterly Journal” himself affirm that anything like what is here described existed in Old Testament times? Will he deny that it is this which “constitutes” the Church? Cannot he distinguish between what constitutes a body, and that which entitles anyone to belong to it? Might not the same title, the will of a monarch, for instance, introduce a person both to the family of that monarch and to his cabinet council? But are both constituted alike? Because it was the will of Her Majesty which alone entitled a person to be her secretary of state, must he needs be her consort also? And if this writer in the “Quarterly Journal” has in his haste overlooked so obvious and important a distinction, ought he to make his own carelessness the ground of impugning the orthodoxy of a writer, who, in the very extract produced, (the only one, moreover, that is produced,) repudiates the charge now sought to be fastened upon him? “The sacrifice of Christ” is the alone title mentioned or recognized in the extract, and it is alike recognized for the Church and for the Old Testament saints.
Again, to confound, as the writer does, Christ's headship of “his body the Church” with that federal headship of all the redeemed, in regard to which the first Adam, our sinful federal head, was a “figure of him that was to come,” is merely to evince total unacquaintance with what scripture teaches on the former subject. Are we members of Adam's body of his flesh, and of his bones, or merely his offspring? Eve was bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh. The Church is such to Christ, and not merely possessed of a life derived from Him, as is the case with all the redeemed people of the second Adam, the Lord from heaven.
The argument from Galatians is based on a mere assumption: viz., that in it “we who live in. this Pentecostal dispensation, are taught respecting our own final blessings.” This language is evidently used to express our own highest as well as final blessings. But where does the Epistle itself inform us that it is of our highest blessings that it treats? Many of those blessings of which it does treat we doubtless share with saints of other dispensations. But our being, in so many respects, “blessed with faithful Abraham,” by no means proves that nothing special attaches to saints of the present dispensation. As to the editorial note on this paragraph, (asserting that the question discussed by the apostle was, “Are believers in Christ really to get up to Abraham's privileges and standing?”) we would ask, Does the editor forget the occasion of the Epistle? Were not certain teachers pretending that it was not enough to believe in Christ, but that to enjoy the benefits of the Abrahamic covenant the Gentile converts must become Jewish proselytes, be circumcised, and keep the law of Moses? To be children of Abraham had been held out to the Galatians by their deceivers as something most desirable, and as only to be attained by obedience to the law. “You are children of Abraham already,” was the apostle's answer: nay, more, “children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.” A most pertinent, blessed answer to the sophistry of those who would have subverted their souls. But certainly it is not in connection with such reasonings that we should look for a development of the highest privileges of the saints. Being Christ's we are Abraham's seed, because He is “the seed” to whom the promises were made. But has Christ no higher title than that of “the seed of Abraham?” Why say then that He has no greater or higher blessedness in which to associate us with Himself than that of being Abraham's seed.
It is of the believers at Colosse, and of their fellow believers in the present dispensation, that Paul predicates the being “circumcised in Christ.” So that whatever this expression may imply, its use by the apostles in the passage referred to can prove nothing as to Old Testament saints.
No doubt we are taught in Heb. 7 that Abraham had “THE PROMISES.” But this is an unfortunate quotation, to prove that no expression could “be more unlimited than that;” seeing that the whole drift of the passage is to show that even Melchizedec, another Old Testament saint, was greater than Abraham.
No one questions that Abraham looked for a heavenly city; but when the writer says, “that heavenly city is elsewhere termed the bride, the Lamb's wife,'“ we must be excused for asking some proof of his assertion. If heaven itself, as the object of Abraham's hope, is mentioned in Scripture under the figure of “a city,” as well as “a country,” are we obliged to identify, it with “that great city, the holy Jerusalem,” which was shown to John “descending out of heaven from God!” Why should we conclude, if a city be named, that it must be the one city of Rev. 21; 22? Or if a marriage, or bride, be spoken of, why must it of necessity be “the marriage of the Lamb,” “the bride, the Lamb's wife?”
Against one misapprehension we must, in concluding, guard. We would not be supposed to confound individual faithfulness with corporate privileges. Many a saint in olden times, with immeasurably inferior light and privileges, walked more closely with God than many, perhaps we might say most, of those to whom the special calling and glory of the Church have been vouchsafed. The righteous Judge of all will surely know how to reward the individual, while His own rich sovereign grace is equally magnified in the blessings common to all, the blessings distinctive of each class, and the new name in the white stone for the individual, secret token as it will be of what is known only to the individual and his Lord.
The Lord keep us near to Himself, and subject in everything to His word.