Dr. Fairbairn is infected with the desire of setting up man's part in divine things, and so below grace. He works in the boundaries fixed by nature.
Page 15. 'When, in respect to things above nature, God reveals His mind to men, He does it through men, and through men not as mere machines, unconsciously obeying a supernatural impulse, but acting in discharge of their personal obligations and the free exercise of their individual powers and susceptibilities.' As regards Old Testament Prophets, this is not true, and even in tongues in the New, and is bad as really rationalistic. He says: 'It is within the boundary lines fixed by nature, and in accordance with the principles of her constitution, alike in the mental and the material world, that the work of grace proceeds.'
Page 22. 'Man, as surely as he is a rational being, is the end of his own existence; he does not exist to the end that something else may be, but he exists absolutely for his own sake; his being is its ultimate object, consequently all should proceed from his own simple personality.' But relationship with what is? This quotation from J. S. Mill is the poorest sophism. Because the question is not an end out of himself, but in what relationship his perfection consists, or whether there is any. It is not only what may be, but what is. Besides it is deifying egoism -- I must not care for my wife, nor for society -- for 'man' says nothing really -- we must say 'a man.' It denies all affections, or even common or social existence, otherwise it is not his own simple personality. But divine does not become human; for God is One, and lone man not. He says: 'The fundamental principle of morality may be expressed in such a formula as this, "So act, that thou mayest look upon the dictate of thy will as an eternal law to thyself." Thus the divine becomes essentially one with the human.'
Page 30. Referring to my paper 'On the Law,' he says: 'The Law, it is held, had a specific character and aim, from which it cannot be dissociated, and which makes it for all time
+"The Revelation of Law in Scripture," by Patrick Fairbairn, D.D. The third series of the "Cunningham Lectures." Edinburgh, T. and T. Clark, 38, George Street. 1869.
the minister of evil.' But this is not so -- the Law is not 'the minister of evil,' but the Law "worketh wrath."
Page 31. 'Distinguishing between the teaching or commandments of Christ, and the commandments of the law, holding the one to be binding on the conscience of Christians and the other not, is plainly but partial Antinomianism; it does not, indeed, essentially differ from Neonomianism, since law, only as connected with the earlier dispensation, is repudiated, while it is received as embodying the principles of Christian morality, and associated with the life and power of the Spirit of Christ.' He here does not even know what he is talking about. It is not law 'as connected with the earlier dispensation,' but law as a principle and system on which man may be placed as contrasted with redemption, grace, and the gift of life. Further, it is not received as embodying the principles of Christian morality, but human morality. God and love having come in, the path of the Christian, as expressed in the life of Christ, goes on much higher ground -- not merely maintenance of human relations, however right, but "perfect as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." And, further, he has not an idea beyond amount of requirement and form of obligation of law, whereas the question is: Is law the form of obligation? He avoids, and professedly, defining what law is, i.e., an undeviating course imposed by the authority or power of another, and asks, 'How far has it varied in amount of requirement or form of obligation, at different periods of the divine administration?'
Page 33. 'The Protestant churches generally stand committed to the belief of the moral law in the Old Testament as in substance the same with that in the New, and from its very nature limited to no age or country, but of perpetual and universal obligation.' This supposes a moral law in the New, which is the whole question, and confounds the principle of law and the substance or contents of a law. 'Of perpetual and universal obligation' then brings in the authority or else confounds the relations, consistency with which the Law insists on, with its authoritative insistence on it. This is what he constantly confounds, though forced sometimes to admit the difference, i.e., that there is no formal law in the New Testament. But, besides, a new relation with God is formed in the New Testament, and this changes everything; of this he knows nothing. "Herein is love, not that we loved him,
but that he loved us." And "We love him, because he first loved us" -- not we ought, must. The Protestant churches have no doubt taken the Decalogue as the grand moral summary under which is all duty, and never really known the Christian position and new creation.
Page 34. 'Sin is but the transgression of law; where no law is, there is no transgression. So that when the Apostle again speaks of certain portions of mankind not having the law, of their sinning without law, and perishing without law, he can only mean that they were without the formal revelation of law, which had been given through Moses to the covenant-people, while still, by the very constitution of their beings, they stood under the bonds of law, and by their relation to these would be justified or condemned.' This, 'Sin is but the transgression of the law,' is a most mischievous heresy. Sin was there to take occasion by the commandment when it came. Of this I have spoken. 'No transgression,' no doubt. Hence we have here, 'can only mean.' All the account of man afterwards is as false and as mischievous as can well be. Impossible to conceive anything more bewildered, more complete following of his own thoughts without Scripture, than his view of Adam's position. He says: 'The original standing of our first parents must have been amid'! 'the obligations of law. And the question is what was the nature of the law associated with man's original state? And how far, or in what respects did it possess the character of a revelation?' A child could answer. They were formally forbidden to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Dr. Fairbairn tells us that it was 'in something else than what in the primeval records carries the formal aspect of law. It was mainly being created in the image of God.' Think of that being a law! And 'What does this import of the requirements of law, or the bonds of moral obligation?'
Page 37. 'Undoubtedly, as the primary element in this idea, must be placed the intellect, or rational nature of the soul in man; the power or capacity of mind, which enabled him in discernment to rise above the impressions of sense. Without such a faculty, there had been wanting the essential ground of moral obligation; man could not be the subject either of praise or of blame; for he should have been incapable of so distinguishing between the true and the false, the right and the wrong, and so appreciating the reasons which ought to make the one
rather than the other the object of one's desire and choice, as to render him responsible for his conduct. In God this property exists in absolute perfection.' God had it always, he says, and so man must.
Now all this is excessive ignorance of divine truth, and in the teeth of Scripture, and shows he does not know what law means. It supposes man had the knowledge of good and evil before the Fall, which is false, that he had it to be like God in it. Whereas God says "The man is become as one of us, knowing good and evil." God did give a positive law which did not require that knowledge, but required obedience. There had been no harm in eating the forbidden fruit, if God had not forbidden it. It was a formal law, but the thing forbidden not wrong unless forbidden. It confounds a nature producing its fruits with a law, i.e., an imposed rule involving the authority or power of another in its true sense. In page 40, he does not stint to say, 'In the permission accorded to man to partake even of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, though with a stern prohibition and threatening to deter him from such a misuse of his freedom.' It is hard to suppose a greater proof of where moral law-defending leads a man. A permission with a stern prohibition shows a strange state of mind, but the meaning is evident. It was not a simple forbidding as test of obedience, but called for the reflective quality of man's mind to decide, on grounds of judged good and evil, what he ought to do. It is hard to conceive greater error than this part of the book. It shows the author, or his principles, incapable of any real scriptural or right thought on the subject. It is well that the system of Adam's having had the law thus -- being only more fully developed at Sinai -- should be brought out clear.
Page 38. But, further, the 'destination of man' is this rational development in knowledge. This is false two ways. It was not the destination of man, but something infinitely higher, and his destiny was in the Second Adam not in the first. Hence, in this system, the Second is a perfecter of the first by better motives and power, with 'potential pardon.' This faculty, however, was to 'secure the good he was capable of attaining.'
Then, page 39, he must have a will to choose -- not obey. He says: 'For this there must be a will to choose, as well as a reason to understand -- a will perfectly free in its movements,
having the light of reason to direct it to the good, but under no constraining force to obey the direction.' If there is really a will, he has chosen. But a will to choose is independence of God. Not obligation to obey a will of our own! We have a will, but a will which is not a will to obey absolutely, as Christ, and nothing else is a fallen will. He would have a will to judge for himself on motives, that is, independently of God. If God be thought of, obedience or sin is the only thing. Adam was left free, i.e., not restrained in action and allowed to be tempted. Confidence and obedience (shown by prayer and hearing the Word) were the right path, as in Christ in the desert in opposite circumstances; man failed in both. But the moment he chose when God had spoken he was a lost being. But an image in which one cannot err, and the other can, is no real image of that in which he so can. He says: 'While God never can, from the infinite perfection of His being, do otherwise than choose with absolute and unerring rectitude, man with his finite nature and his call to work amid circumstances and conditions imposed on him from without could have no natural security for such unfailing rectitude of will.' God never chooses.
Page 41. His statements as to immortal life are all wrong too. In the divine nature they are results! In man too they are results! Note "eternal life" is not noticed by him. He says: 'Blessedness and immortality are inseparable accompaniments of the divine nature, but rather as results flowing from the perpetual exercise of its inherent powers and glorious perfections, than qualities possessed apart -- hence in man suspended on the rightful employment of the gifts and prerogatives committed to him.' Adam was not immortal -- certainly a sinner. Now that is true as to bodily death as an effect of sin, but of that he is not speaking, for it would not apply to God. To show, too, how he does not get beyond the first man, the common idea of restoring the image is referred to -- 'the restoration to the image of God, in the case of those who partake in the new creation through the grace and Gospel of Christ' -- and 'knowledge is the product of illuminated reason.'
Page 43. Adam's state in innocence when fresh and pure is judged of 'from what we still know him to be' (not from Scripture). 'Sin, while it has sadly vitiated his moral constitution, not having subverted its nature, or essentially changed its manner of working.' (No wonder Dr. Fairbairn takes law!)
This of course ignores the Scripture that he got the knowledge of good and evil in the Fall. Surely enmity against God is a subversion of our nature -- not being possible to be subject to the law of God is an essential change. This is the secret of the mischief -- no true sense of sin. He confounds responsibility, which arises from relationships, and in innocence were naturally walked in, with a law which imposes them, or rather conduct which fulfils them or results in punishment inflicted according to it by power. His quotation from Harless is right enough: 'There is something above the merely human and creaturely in what man is sensible of in the operation of conscience, whether he may himself recognise and acknowledge it as such or not. The workings of his conscience do not, indeed, give themselves to be known as properly divine, and in reality are nothing more than the movements of the human soul; but they involve something which I, as soon as I reflect upon it, cannot explain from the nature of spirit, if this is contemplated merely as the ground in nature of my individual personal life, which after a human manner has been born in me. I stand before myself as before a riddle, the key of which can be given, not by human self-consciousness, but by the revelation of God in His word.' But Dr. Fairbairn's inference to Adam's state is a denial of the effect of eating the forbidden fruit. Conscience, save in a figurative sense, is a law, because God has placed it as a monitor, taking care that when sin came in conscience should come in with it. But it is the opposite of true law -- nomon me echontes (not having law) is the word. And God describes it by man's becoming "as one of us, knowing good and evil" in himself, i.e., not imposed by authority to which he had to answer as responsible. To apply such a thought to God is absurd. I could say, God was a law to Himself, just meaning He was under none, but that His own perfection made Him always act so and so. As a fact, man has the knowledge of good and evil which is not a law, even so in the sense of a rule, for it may be vitiated, as in Saul and millions else. "I thought I ought." But it is the faculty of making the difference and holding one thing for good, another for evil, making the difference between good and evil in my mind, whatever my rule may be. But you cannot speak of being 'subject and accountable,' when speaking of God. Obedience, conscience, and law, or the rule of conscience, are all distinct things. Obedience refers to authority -- law to a rule imposed -- conscience
to my making a difference between good and evil, right and wrong in myself, if there was no authority, no obedience, no law. For that is as God does. He says: 'We are compelled to regard the absolute standard of right and wrong as constituted by the nature of the Deity.' The nature of the Deity as the absolute standard of right and wrong is all false till I get the Second Man, and supposes evil, as does revealed law after the Fall. For in God I have sovereign love, learnt in Christ's sacrifice, and I have divine purity in a nature which cannot sin. But to make a creature have the nature of the Deity as his absolute standard as such, falsifies duty, because God cannot be in the relations man is in, and duty flows from it. Hence, when the Decalogue is given, there is no revelation of God's nature at all, but simply the obligations of man's towards God and his neighbour. Christianity says, "Be ye therefore imitators of God as dear children" -- when we are such, and gives Christ as the pattern -- "perfect as your Father" -- but He is it first. "God commends his love to us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." In Him were the two poles of perfection. Absolute self-sacrifice (not loving a neighbour as oneself, which is no divine perfection, and cannot be) for us -- that is purely divine, no worthy object, but divine goodness; to God -- that is absolute human perfection, divine indeed but still of and in a Man. The Law knew nothing of this, but man's duties where he was, but Christ was God manifest in the flesh, and that is our pattern. But he who so walks will have no law against what he does. Of this there is no thought in Dr. Fairbairn's mind.
Page 45. 'For what was the law, when it came, but the idea of the divine image set forth after its different sides, and placed in formal contrast to sin and opposition to God?' The Law being 'the idea of the divine image' is mere nonsense, if the Decalogue, as he says, is the grand display of it, for that image is not thought of in it, but man's duties towards God and his neighbour, which in the nature of things cannot apply to God. Much of, indeed all of it, in its nature supposes sin. And even when it is said, "Be ye holy," there is no thought of "as," but only "for," and perfection is "with Jehovah thy God," not "as." That is in principle in Christianity alone, because Christ was come, the Second Man, not the first. It is this that makes it so dreadfully false, and falsifies the nature of law. The first Adam is the history of responsibility in man
innocent, and a sinner -- the last, the Second Man, the display of God in man, the perfectly obedient Man. He was born under the Law, but He was much more than that -- God manifest in flesh, and that is not law at all.
Again, 'Strictly speaking, man at first stood in law rather than under law -- being formed to the spontaneous exercise of that pure and holy love, which is the expression of the divine image, and hence also to the doing of what the law requires.' But man was under express law at first, and is so spoken of in Hosea 6:7 and Romans 5, which quotes it.
Pages 46, 47. 'The law of the Ten Commandments was written on Adam's heart on his creation,' etc. This is simple, but well known nonsense. How could "Thou shalt not steal" be a law to Adam? Or "kill," or "lust"? It all supposes sin and a fallen state, and in principle so does every prohibition of evil, and indeed a command to love God. 'Binding to obedience' is all very well -- that Adam's law did, but it did not suppose sin. The moment Scripture is owned, which expressly declares that man got the knowledge of good and evil by the Fall, and that this part, if they please to call it so, was acquired then, as Scripture expressly and in terms asserts, "The man is become as one of us," all this falls to the ground. He says 'God had furnished man's soul with an understanding mind, whereby he might discern good from evil and right from wrong; and not only so, but also in his will was most perfect uprightness (Ecclesiastes 7:29) and his instrumental parts (i.e., his executive faculties and powers) were in an orderly way framed to obedience.'
Page 48. 'Understood after this manner, the language in question is quite intelligible and proper, though certainly capable of being misapplied (if too literally taken), and in form slightly differing from the Scripture representation; Romans 2:14, 15.' It is well it is admitted it differs slightly from Scripture representation -- if it does, it is wrong, and wrong on a fundamental point; and Romans most assuredly, on which it is said to be built, does not speak of man before his fall. Again, wrong as he is, he is obliged to admit it is not 'properly a revelation of law in Adam.'
Pages 49 - 51. This is all imagination. 'Man possessed a sense of beauty as an essential ground of his intelligence and fellowship with Heaven. He was therefore to cultivate the feeling of the beautiful, by cultivating the appropriate beauty
inherent in everything that lives.' Scripture history of development of art is Cain when he had lost God altogether. Why is this so given? The sense of beauty is of God, and finds it in its place in God's works, as Christ in the lily, not in Solomon. All this, too, makes the first man the object of God's designs and counsels -- a fatal error, and a denial of the Cross. He says, 'Man was to trace, in the operations proceedings around him, the workings of the divine mind, and then make them bear the impress of his own'!
Pages 52, 53. 'Man had the light of Heaven within him, and of his own accord should have taken the course, which his own circumstances, viewed in connection with the divine procedure, indicated as dutiful and becoming. The real question is, did not the things recorded contain the elements of law? Was there not in them such a revelation of the mind of God, as bespoke an obligation to observe the day of weekly rest, for those whose calling was to embrace the order and do the works of God?' How different the Apostle on entering into God's rest! But note the admission that there ought not to be a law -- 'there was no formal enactment binding the observance of the day on man, neither should it have been.' There were, he says, 'the elements of law.' The Sabbath was in no way a law. As Fairbairn justly says, 'law was not required while man was pure.' He would have enjoyed 'the sanctified day' with God, I do not doubt, if he had not sinned, but this just shows law was not the thing, save as test of obedience, till man was a sinner, and then, in fact, could only condemn. I have no doubt having part in the rest of God is the essence of blessing; but that is not the question, but law, and this he admits. it was not, but one of its elements, i.e., a thing law occupied itself about, but not law.
Page 55. 'High as man's original calling was to preside over and subdue the earth, to improve and multiply its resources, to render it in all respects subservient to the ends for which it was made.' This, again, is a totally false statement of man's calling.
Page 57. Speaking of the command respecting the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he says, 'it served to erect a standard, every way proper and becoming, around which the elements of good and evil might meet, and the ascendancy of the one or the other be made manifest.' What elements of good and evil? This is talk.
Page 59. 'If grace should interpose to rectify the evil that had emerged, and place the hopes of mankind on a better footing than that of nature, this grace must reign through righteousness, and overcome death by overcoming the sin which caused it.' How 'by overcoming the sin'? It was by redemption.
Page 61. Here, again, we have this civilisation process as the purpose of God with innocent man. 'The charge given to man at the moment of creation, would necessarily have involved a continuous rise in the outward theatre of his existence; and it may justly be inferred, that as this proceeded, his mental and bodily condition would have partaken of influences fitted indefinitely to ennoble and bless it.' But what follows is worse, because restoration is made progressive, not a work of redemption. 'The progression had now to proceed, not from a less to a more complete form of excellence, but from a state of sin and ruin to one of restored peace, life, and purity, culminating in the possession of all blessing and glory in the kingdom of the Father.' Revelation of redemption might be progressive, and steps preparatory to it. He speaks of progress from sin to 'restored peace, life, and purity.' It is all a fable. Where is the Flood in this progress? It was a world apart before which ended there, and then the ways of God began, and 'it is the enlightenment and regeneration of the world on the principle of progression'! Really, God had given man up to a reprobate mind, calling Abram out apart. Thus page 63 shows how utterly false the whole system is. The total developed corruption of man without law, and the destruction of the world is ignored -- a confirmed promise to one, to which law could not be added, which was the covenant of blessing in contrast with subsequent law, and the world, i.e., man apart from it, being given up. All God's ways are given up for a mere theory and fable.
Page 66. 'As regards the manner in which the call to imitate God's goodness, and be conformed to His will was to be carried out, it would of course be understood that, whatever was fairly involved in the original destination of man to replenish and cultivate the earth, so as to make it productive of the good of which it was capable, and subservient to the ends of a wise and paternal government, this remained as much as ever his calling and duty.' If so, Cain driven out from God did better than Abel. 'Man's proper vocation was not
altered by the Fall,'! i.e., civilisation. "All that is in the world is not of the Father, but of the world." The rest of God was wholly lost in the first creation. Sacrifice, with death, was what God now owned. But, for Dr. Fairbairn, the rest of God remains.
Page 69. 'Somehow -- apparently, indeed, in connection with the clothing of the shame of our first parents by means of the skins of slain victims -- they were guided to a worship by sacrifice as the one specially adapted to their state as sinners. Here then, again, without any positive command, there was not law, in the formal sense of the term, but the elements of law,' etc. We have in the clothing of skins, and Abel, not law but death, and covering and acceptance in righteousness by grace through death, the very opposite of law, "for if righteousness came by law, Christ is dead in vain."
Page 70. This is a formal confession that there was no law till Moses. 'To speak of law in the moral and religious sphere -- law in some definite and imperative form, standing outside the conscience, and claiming authority to regulate its decisions, as having a place in the earlier ages of mankind, is not warranted by any certain knowledge we possess of the remoter periods of God s dispensations.'
Page 70. 'With the majority of men, conscience and motives failed.' Were there some then with whom it did not fail? It was 'the weakness of our moral nature, the upper part giving way to the lower.' Where is enmity against God, and all concluded under sin? And is flesh lusting against the Spirit this state? Note he quotes it 'the flesh lusts against the Spirit'
Page 74. 'The melancholy picture drawn near the commencement of the Epistle to the Romans, as an ever deepening and darkening progression in evil, realises itself wherever fallen nature is allowed to operate unchecked. It did so in the primitive, as well as the subsequent stages of human history. First, men refused to employ the means of knowledge they possessed respecting God's nature and will, would not glorify Him as God.' All this progress and 'First' is a simple mistake. The statement is that, having degraded the idea of God in idolatry, God gave them up to degrade themselves.
Page 75. 'Not for many long ages -- not till the centuries of antediluvian times had passed away, and centuries more after a new state of things had commenced its course -- did
God see meet to manifest Himself to the world in the formal character of Lawgiver ... . A proof, manifestly, of God's unwillingness to assume this more severe aspect in respect to beings He had made in His own image, and press upon them, in the form of specific enactments, His just claims on their homage and obedience!' This is really too bad systematising. God, unwilling to be so harsh as to be a Lawgiver when He had destroyed all the world but eight! At any rate it is a confession there was not a law. Then the separation of Abram from all the world in idolatry, even Shem's family (Joshua 24) is ignored. There is no scriptural recognition of idolatry before the Flood. But if law is a 'painful necessity,' how is it 'God's image, universal and Christian'?
Page 76. 'There was no law till Egypt, save blood for blood, and circumcision, but principles of law became manifestations of God's character to attract confiding love.' Was ever such confusion? Were these 'a painful necessity'?
Pages 78, 79. It is remarkable how the statements of Scripture are lost in vague generalities. But that is was 'not to occupy an independent place,' etc., is all false. He says: 'The law could not have been intended -- the very time and occasion of its introduction prove that it could not have been intended -- to occupy an independent place; it was of necessity but the sequel or complement of the covenant of promise, with which were bound up the hopes of the world's salvation, to help out in a more regular and efficient manner the moral aims which were involved in the covenant itself.' It was not against the promises of God, but it was on a different ground -- doing, not faith in what Another had done. It was not to help out 'in a more regular and efficient manner' the promise. It was "added because of transgressions," came in by-the-bye "that the offence might abound," and it is monstrous to say that 'the ground of a sinner's confidence towards God, and the nature of the obligations growing out of it, remained essentially as they were.'
And (page 80) citing Exodus 3:6-17, he says: 'When appearing for the purpose of charging Moses to undertake the work of deliverance, the Lord revealed Himself as at once Jehovah, the one unchangeable and eternal God.' 'And as soon as the deliverance was achieved, and the tribes of Israel lay at the foot of Sinai, ready to hear what their redeeming God might have to say to them, the first message that came to
them was one that most strikingly connected the past with the future, the redeeming grace of a covenant God with the duty of service justly expected of a redeemed people.' But in Exodus 6 He declares He had not revealed Himself by His name Jehovah. And Sinai made all depend on "IF ye will obey my voice" -- was not "of one" (Galations 3:16), whereas the promise was a pure promise, dependent on God's fidelity only to the promise confirmed to Christ. This distinction is ignored. Israel's receiving the Law after redemption from Egypt, might show to a spiritual mind that man could in no way have to say to God on this ground, but does not touch the question of the ground on which he was then set, which was his own obedience, and blessing if it was found. In fact it is sovereign grace, and gracious discipline (including millennial government) up to Sinai, and then all was changed. They were to worship there, instead of which they got the Law and fell in the wilderness -- for the same acts as before Sinai they were violently smitten. Even Moses, for one fault, could not go in -- a sign of its bearing.
Pages 83, 84. 'In the personal announcement which introduces the ten fundamental precepts, it is that same glorious and unchangeable Being coming near to Israel in the character of their redeeming God. Redemption carries in its bosom a conformity to the divine order, and only when the soul responds to the righteousness of Heaven is the work of deliverance complete.' It put, as to Israel after the redemption, under the repelling terrors of exclusion from His presence, life before them and blessing on the strict condition of obedience, and in Law this was right (death and malediction if they did not).
Page 85. Quoting Exodus 34:6, 7, he says: 'It intimates, indeed, that justice could not forego its claims, that obstinate transgressors should meet their desert, but gives this only the subordinate and secondary place, while grace occupies the foreground.' As to Moses -- his intercession spared the people for the time, but the revelation of grace would not clear the guilty (just what Christianity does) and the soul that sinned was to be blotted out of God's book, Moses not being able to make atonement for which he had gone up with a 'peradventure.' 'Justice could not forego its claims, but it gives this only the secondary place.' This is not Christianity, nor anything save governmental patience and goodness. Justice never foregoes its claims, cannot, but it is satisfied in Christ, not put
in a secondary place, though grace reigns. To Moses governmental goodness was shown, but justice maintained its claims, and no atonement was made -- each soul had to answer for itself. There is no sense of sin in this book. He says, citing these verses, 'Was this to act like One who was more anxious to inspire terror, than win affection from men?' 'Win affection from men'! It was said to Moses, who had found grace -- if the people approached they died. Was not that terror? Yet, in page 86, he says it is 'a formal, stringent law.' It is not a question if there were promises -- there were plenty, but on the strict condition of man's fulfilling the Law and obedience.
Pages 87, 88. 'It has ever been the maxim of all judicious and thoughtful commentators on the law of the two tables, that when evil is forbidden, the opposite good is to be understood as enjoined.' 'Opposite good to be understood,' is making a law and adding to God's, and in a general way falsifying it. Yet on this is founded here the introduction of the principle of love, though this is all ignorance of Christianity, because it is only love as duty upwards, or to a neighbour as oneself, the duty of the relationship, not divine goodness known and shown, which depends on none. The good Samaritan is the converse of the question asked, and the exchange of the Decalogue goes no further than love to a neighbour, in one word fulfilling it all (and as this was done in grace, the Law not needed) but neither reach the Christian principle of imitating God and giving up self. Yet he says, 'The Apostles freely interchange the precept of love with the commands of the Decalogue, as mutually explanatory of each other. And thus, in part at least, may be explained the negative form of the ten commandments.'
Page 90. 'The negative is doubtless in itself the lower form of command; and when so largely employed as it is in the Decalogue, it must be regarded as contemplating and striving to meet the strong current of evil that runs in the human heart.' That is, the Law of the Decalogue supposes sin, and could not be in Paradise.
Page 143. "The true import of the Levitical code is not seen on the curt statutes.' 'The occasional access of a few ministering priests into the courts of that worldly sanctuary -- an access into its inmost receptacle by one person only, and by him only once a year -- how imperfect an image of the believer's
freedom of intercourse with God, and habitual consciousness of His favour and blessing!' I have nothing to say to this. 'Imperfect an image of the believer's freedom' was a sign given by the Holy Ghost that they could not go at all; Hebrews 9.
Before going further, I state that no Christian doubts that the contents of the Law are good -- the Law, holy, just and good. Further, when God acts, He more or less displays His character, what He is, and, as a general principle, there must be goodness and lovingkindness, because these above all characterise Him. Even judgment will put an end to evil, be deliverance from evil, though in itself more purely righteousness. The Cross gives the whole truth fully. But all this is not the question, but what is, as such, Law? It is requirement from man, not the revelation of God. In its dispensation, a God who had delivered may have uttered it, but it is requirement from man of what he ought to do, or prohibition of what he ought not to do. In the Decalogue, save one commandment, or at most two (4 and 5) the latter -- i.e., it supposes, and, in eight or nine tenths of it, speaks of sin. Obligation does not rest on law, but on relationship. Law maintains these -- so does Christ, but on a different principle. God has formed men in certain relations to Himself and one another. A good nature -- and man was so formed -- would walk naturally in them, because it was a conscious relationship by Creation itself, and the communications connected with it. I add this, because always true with God, another being -- it was needed and existed. Law takes up these relationships, with some other things consequent as facts on the Fall. Hence the Decalogue is not arbitrary, but God's maintenance of the relationships He had placed man in -- in the circumstances in which he now found himself. It is a perfect rule for the child of Adam as he is, as a summary of positive duty, including all, we must add, what the Lord cites. But two things make the difference. It is law, not grace -- secondly, grace has, though sanctioning all this, changed the relationship. We are God's children in grace, not Adam's. Though in the relationship, the obligation remains. Hence duty, and measure of duty, flowing from, existing in the relationship, the rule and measure is different. Grace says not, 'man must love God' -- right, perfectly right, as that is as fact of duty, though hopeless for man in form -- but "God loves," and "we" (not 'must') "love him because he first
loved us." It is a new nature and a new relationship. Law is addressed to man in flesh, and tells him his duty and no more. Hence useful to judge.
Page 148. Quoting Deuteronomy 4:7, 8, he says: 'Coming expressly from Jehovah in the character of Israel's Redeemer, the Law cannot be contemplated otherwise than as carrying a benign aspect, and aiming at happy results. Moses extolled the condition of Israel as on this very account surpassing that of all other people.' The Law being better to them as a nation than the heathen laws, and gods, has nothing to do with the question. The next class of passages he cites (Psalms 103, 119 and 147: 19, 20) is the renewed man delighting in the revelation of God's will and word, of which the New Testament even in Romans 7, speaks as clearly as these passages. But that is not being under law. The question is treated by Paul as the question of justification, and then of deliverance. But he does not really understand the question, nor any who take up law as he does.
Page 151. 'The people had just been rescued, it was declared, from Egypt, had been borne by God on eagles' wings, and brought to Himself -- for what? Not simply that they might acknowledge His existence, or preserve His memory, in the face of surrounding idolatry, but that they might obey His voice and keep His covenant, and so be to Him "a kingdom of priests and an holy nation."' This is a wholly false quotation on the whole point in question. He says they were borne on eagles' wings that they might obey His voice, citing Exodus 19:4, 6, but verse 5 says "Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice," etc., "Ye shall be," etc., i.e., makes all depend on the people's obedience. This one sentence shows where he is Nor, further, is there a word about 'reflecting His character,' nor 'holy as He is holy.' Holiness was required, because God was holy; 'as' is only in the Gospel.
Page 152. 'If the law had been aught else than a real disclosure of the mind of God as to what He demands of His people toward Himself and toward each other in the vital interests of truth and righteousness, it had been beneath the occasion.' It was the mind of God as to what He demands of His people towards Himself and the neighbour in the interests of righteousness ('truth' is too much -- that came by Jesus Christ), but 'demands of righteousness on man' is not the reflection of God's character. So, when the lawyer asks: "Who
is my neighbour," He does not say 'everybody,' but changes the whole aspect, and shows One who is a Neighbour towards another in grace, not who was his neighbour, but One acting in love to need -- what Christ became in grace. The Law, so given, is treated as a thing come in by the bye, till the Seed came. All the notions founded on this romance of general progress are false. God could only raise the question of man's righteousness, for that was the Law, in a people separated out of the world to Himself -- as progress with man, it would have falsified His knowledge of their lost estate (seeking the Lord did not) and that is just the root of this system. Hence it is given to a nation externally redeemed, and the question raised with an 'if.'
Page 153. 'It will not do to say, by way of explanation, that in rejecting Jesus they set themselves against the very Head of Theocracy, and so ran counter to its primary design; for it was not in that character that He formally appeared and claimed the homage of men, but rather as Himself the living embodiment of its great principles, the culmination of its spiritual aims.' It was just because the contrary was really true that He was rejected.
Page 155. 'Witsius finds in the precepts of the Decalogue the moral elements of the covenant of works; they only assumed somewhat of the appearance of the covenant of Moses to convince people of their sinfulness,' etc. This is just in the teeth of the Apostle.
Page 157. 'They' (Israel) 'were no more bound to seek righteousness by the law, than the young man was by our Saviour's saying to him, If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.' The Saviour in these words takes the Ten Commandments as the covenant of 'Do and live.'
Page 158. 'The law carried with it the bond of a sacred obligation which they were to strive to make good; and of any other meaning or design, either on God's part in imposing, or on their part in accepting the obligation, the narrative is entirely silent'! This is too bad. Their being a peculiar people depended on obeying His voice! That there were promises which faith could look to, and prophecy which preceded, accompanied, and followed it, is true, but this was not law nor determines its character, unless as being something else. The question is whether really we are to take the New
Testament, or Dr. Fairbairn as the divine interpreter. To say that 'life took here precedence of righteousness' is too bad, when an Apostle tells us the righteousness of the Law speaks thus: "He that doeth these things shall live in them." I had rather have Paul than Dr. Fairbairn. The Lord does not say a word of the 'dowry of eternal life' -- "all live unto him" -- but proves the resurrection. It is a most mischievous perversion. He says, 'It carries in its bosom the dowry of eternal life; so that grace took precedence of law, life of righteousness.' To Abraham, further, it was unconditioned promise, and the uncircumcised was cut off from blessing which remained to others. At the Law, the covenant was absolutely based on the condition of man's obedience as its first principle. All this page is merely contradicting Scripture, and profound moral ignorance as to Scripture truth.
So page 163. 'Access continually lay open to them to God.' Quite the contrary. Individual faith in promise might go to God, but the law, tabernacle and all said, Death if you come near. God did not come out -- man could not go in. In Christ, God did come out, and -- blessed be God -- Man is gone in. The Holy Ghost signified this by the veil. We have boldness to enter into the holiest by a new and living way, consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, His flesh, and we draw nigh. And even in the sacrifices, they were in contrast with Christ -- a remembrance of sins still there -- now perfected for ever, never to be remembered.
Page 164. 'The moral barrier raised in defence of the truth by the Decalogue preserved the better portion of the covenant-people from the dangers which in this respect beset them -- preserved them in the knowledge and belief of one God, as sovereign Lord and moral Governor of the world.' That God called out Abraham to preserve the knowledge of one God is surely true, that that the Law was given to maintain this, but what was 'the better portion of the covenant-people'? Was it the Law made them so, or sent Paul to Mars' hill? The Law could have preached no such sermon. It had priests (because they could not go to God) not ministry. The captivity of Babylon was what ended Israel and took the throne away. Paul preached Jesus and the resurrection. This was his defence, not his sermon; and he refers not to law but to the judgment of the world by Christ, and resurrection as the proof. That the Jewish system preserved the knowledge of the true
God, through grace, by its better portion, I do not deny. And of course, God was known by faith as the Redeemer, the Hope of Israel. It is not the question what Israel had, but what is law? The promise of the woman's seed, and even the promise of Abraham's was before law, and on their faith always rested, where it was more than governmental, where full grace was needed, else Moses and responsibility, and these are never confounded. Psalm 119 is the Law written in the heart (and prophetically, with all the Psalms, belongs to that time) that is on the face of it, and to quote it thus is to confound the new covenant with the old. The 'better portion' had it so written, but that is not law in the sense of Sinai. That was written on stone. All this is simply confounding grace and law, the old covenant and the new. We have other things too.
Page 167. 'The want of right views of sin cleaves as a fundamental defect to all ancient philosophy.' Yes, and to all modern philosophy too.
Page 176. Note. 'Philippians 3:6. That Paul speaks thus of his earlier life from a Pharisaic point of view, is evident from the connection; as he is avowedly recounting the things which had reference to the flesh (verse 4) and which gave him a merely external ground of glorying. It is further evident, from what he says of his relation to the law elsewhere, when he came to a proper understanding of its real import (Romans 7); and also from the utter want of satisfaction, which even here he expresses, of his former life after the light of truth dawned upon his mind (verse 78).' No doubt, but this is "We know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin." It is not only grace but Christianity alone which can speak thus. You never get 'flesh' thus distinguished from 'me' in the Old Testament. It is Christian knowledge learned through the exercises of Romans 7, and only fully, save in despair, or all but despair, when we have the Holy Ghost, through redemption, which Israel had not. Besides, the remark in the note is not true -- Paul was blameless as to the Decalogue, save when the tenth commandment came, spiritually understood. So the Lord with the young man.
Page 177. 'The covenant of Sinai -- taken by itself, simply as the revelation of law -- 'genders to bondage'; Galations 4:24. Paul does not say 'taken by itself'; he says it does so. Under age, sons did not differ from servants, had not the spirit of sons. And Dr. Fairbairn has to admit that sons are of 'the
covenant of promise alone, not by that of law.' Why then so many words?
Page 178. 'The law which could condemn but not expiate their sin, cried for vengeance with a voice that must be heard, and wrath from heaven fell upon them to the uttermost.' It was the rejection of Christ, not the Law which brought vengeance on them. Babylon had done that, though none would come, but it is rejecting the Son which causes the labourers' city to be burned. It was stumbling on the Stone. "If I had come among them," says the Lord, "they had not had sin."
Page 180. Nothing can exceed the inaccuracy of this man's mind. He says: 'There can be no doubt that the law, taken in its entireness, and as forming the most prominent feature in the economy brought in by Moses, however wisely adapted to the time then present, was still inlaid with certain inherent defects, which discovered themselves in the working of the system, and paved the way for its ultimate removal. As an economy, it belonged to an immature stage of the divine dispensations, and as such was constituted after a relatively imperfect form.' The Law in its entireness, here only a 'prominent feature in the economy, was inlaid with certain inherent defects!' Now the Law of God itself had no defect in it. In the next sentence he says it is 'an economy.' Yet 'the institutions and ordinances were associated with it'! And 'a change must somehow be introduced into the divine economy'! What was changed? The Law as a moral thing, for the institutions were only associated with it? All his book is to prove the contrary. It is really teaching the Law, and not knowing what they say, nor whereof they affirm. But it is the natural effect of his system.
Page 181. 'Whatever the contents of law, simply as law, written on perishable materials, it has a merely outward and objective character ... without any direct influence over the secret springs and motives of conduct.' Well! some say, But how then was it to do so much good to man, save convincing him of sin?
Pages 182, 183. Which is true that 'law supposes the will of man inwardly obstinate, rebellious, averse to all obedience,' or 'the elements of good are all there, though existing in comparative feebleness, and by means of discipline are stimulated'? They talk too of the 'ancient believer.' The question
is with man, not with the believer. A new nature delights in law, but it is new.
Page 185. Moses did not give 'intimations of its imperfect character,' but plain statements of Israel's wickedness, and of God's way for His own glory.
Page 189. Here the Law is 'considered as a national covenant'! I do not expect him to understand the Psalms or Ecclesiastes. In the latter, Jehovah does not enter -- it is man and God, till the last conclusion. In the Psalms, this varies prophetically, according to Israel's place. But all this part which refers to the subject of Hebrews, not Romans, Galatians, and 2 Corinthians 3, I say nothing of. The progress in the Psalms and Prophets, though Dr. Fairbairn understands nothing of their real import, no one doubts. But this has nothing to do with what is 'The revelation of law.' The Psalms contain lovely expressions of faith and confidence in God and Jehovah who governs, but the relation of a child with a father is never found, nor a feeling which distinctively belongs to it. The difference is sensible, and if piety has been nourished by them, Christianity has been Judaised.
Page 212. We have here the excessively low idea of Christianity, cause and effect too of these wretched views, 'a vivifying pulse felt through society, and humanity springing aloft into a higher sphere, a new career of fruitfulness in intellectual and moral action.' 'A real reform' though for, I must say, decency, 'salvation work' is named with 'the better spirit growing out of it.' It is all pleasing the spirit of the age. It was an 'undertaking, for which Christ seemed unfit'!
Page 215. 'The condition of affairs immensely aggravated the difficulty of the undertaking for Him; so that the wisdom, the resolution, the power to carry it into execution, was of God!' Is this really redemption in Christ?
Page 216. 'Not only were the materials for all provided by Christ in His earthly ministry, but the way also was begun to be opened for their proper application and use; and what was afterwards done in this respect by the hands of the apostles was merely the continuation and further unfolding of the line of instruction already commenced by their Divine Master.' This is partially true. Hebrews' truth takes this ground, and in some degree Peter. But then Hebrews puts all into heaven, and shows the contrast much more than the comparison; a veil -- but now rent -- to show that they could not go in, now
that they can; sacrifice -- but then repeated, to show sin was not put away, now, not repeated, because it is; and so on. But, as to the Church, and the mystery, the Apostle declares they were wholly hidden, as they must have been. So, when Christ was on earth, He never calls Himself the Messiah, save to the woman of Samaria, and, once morally rejected, tells His disciples not. He is Son of Man, and Son of God. When He takes that character, He is not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, and forbids His disciples to go to Samaritans or Gentiles. That He fully owned the Law and the Prophets is quite clear. But all the higher teaching of Christianity was not in the Prophets, as is distinctly affirmed.
Page 217. 'Identifying Himself with the Temple, He declared that when He fell, as the Redeemer of the world, it too should virtually fall.' It virtually fell! It is really a romance.
Page 219. 'It was in His memorable Sermon on the Mount that our Lord made the chief formal promulgation of the fundamental principles of His Kingdom.' Principles of His kingdom truly -- not of His Church, and chiefly the character of those in Israel who could enter. There is no question of redemption in it, but what characters could enter into His Kingdom -- doubtless, if entered, they guide us in it. But Christ was showing the king of people that suited His kingdom; but neither redemption nor the Church. He was in the way with Israel, and righteousness preceded entering.
Pages 220, 221. All this is excessively paltry. 'The difference in the external scenery alone, in the two mounts'! 'Sinai less perfectly a mountain than a lofty and precipitous rock'! The 'Alps unclothed -- stripped of all verdure and vegetation,' etc. 'When Galilee was a well-cultivated and fertile region, and the rich fields which slope downwards to the lake were seen waving with their summer produce,' etc., etc.
Page 222. Speaking of the giving of the Law from Sinai, and the Sermon on the Mount, he says: 'The difference between the new and the old is relative only, not absolute. There are the same fundamental elements in both, but these differently adjusted, so as fitly to adapt them to the ends they had to serve, and the times to which they respectively belonged.' What were the 'promises in the law'? Long life in the Land! Let anyone read the Beatitudes and see the spirit looked for in man for blessing (not required as law at all) and put the Ten
Commandments beside them, and say if the same fundamental elements 'are in both,' but these differently adjusted.' In the first place there are no relationships referred to. A state of soul is described which the Lord pronounces blessed -- nothing is required. There is instruction, warning, no grace announced, but the character described which suited the kingdom, if they would enter, which was just going to be set up.
Pages 223, 224. 'Think not that I came to destroy the law or the prophets, I came not to destroy but to fulfil.' This latter expression must be taken in its plain and natural sense. It means simply to substantiate, by doing what they required, or making good what they announced. 'The law is fulfilled when the things are done which are commanded,' etc. Then if fulfilled, it is not 'putting others under it,' and it is the sense. But he does not see that the Lord all through is describing the previous character among the Jews, to which entrance into the Kingdom should belong. That Christ maintained the authority of Law and Prophets no one doubts, and, as far as fulfilled, they are fulfilled in Him. The question is, Does He put us under the Law as law?
Page 226. 'The kingdom, as to the righteousness recognised and expected in it, was to rise on the foundation of the law and the prophets.' This is exceedingly vague, as his statements are, and hard to take hold of. At any rate, it is not said anywhere, and it is not Christian ground. Now "without law" (choris nomou) righteousness of God is revealed. As to the Decalogue, they are not 'the fundamental statutes of the Kingdom.' This is wholly false. The Law and the Prophets were until John, since then the Kingdom of God is preached. The Sermon on the Mount is Christ's giving to His disciples, when multitudes thronged, the principles of which any of the Jews could enter. There is not a word of redemption, nothing whatever of Christianity as such, nor of Christian doctrine, nor of grace -- not one word. The Jews had other ideas. These are His authoritative ones as to what characters suited His kingdom, and nothing more, including the heavenly part in case of persecution, which is supposed even in Daniel. Christ fulfilled the law no doubt -- He was born or came under it; that does not say He put us under it after He was risen and no longer under it, having borne its curse. And the kingdom had taken a wholly new form, the King being rejected and hid in God. And as no redemption, no grace is mentioned
in the Sermon, but the rock is unquestionably personal obedience. It must be supposed that one may disobey a little and get in, only having a little place! Supposing a great one was disobeyed? If it is said 'shut out,' what is the ground and measure of Christian entrance into the kingdom? That Christ as I said confirms the law and prophets by His authority, for they can by Him be confirmed as they were by the Transfiguration, no one doubts. The whole law in every part is fulfilled -- ceremonies in the substance -- in Him; and He, not our obedience is the end of the Law for righteousness. Some things might be carried higher, but not broken. It is Christ giving the true character of what He will have for the kingdom, not grace and redemption. But he knows nothing of the different positions in which Christ stood as the Christ or as Saviour. Pages 226, 227 are a mere muddle of contradiction from the false position he has taken.
Page 228. 'After so solemnly asserting His entire harmony with the law and the prophets, and His dependence on them, it would manifestly have been to lay Himself open to the charge of inconsistence, and actually to shift the ground which He professedly occupied in regard to them, if now He should go on to declare, that, in respect to the great landmarks of moral and religious duty, they said one thing, and He said another.' But He says nothing of harmony but of fulfilling. What means 'His dependence on them'? One thing is clear -- personal righteousness is the ground of entrance into the Kingdom, and, when Christ is dealing with Israel as such, this is the ground He takes, and that He does in Matthew to the end of chapter 12. The disciples were to enquire who in city or village were worthy, and go there, not seek sinners, nor go into the way of the Gentiles or city of the Samaritans. Is this the Gospel? If a Jew had taught against any commandment of God, he was going against God's authority -- if it amounted to hating his enemies in given special cases, and, as such, was.
But it imports to give the true character of this Sermon on the Mount for its own sake, and as the stronghold of the legalist. That the Christian can learn there what is pleasing to the Lord, is not the question -- that is clearly so from even the Law -- but what is its true character, and whether it puts us under law? In Matthew, Christ is seed of Abraham, seed of David, Emmanuel, Jehovah the Messiah come into Israel,
sent to the lost sheep there, and first even to the nation, born King of the Jews. It is not, as Luke, first the Jewish Remnant, and then the Son of Man traced up to Adam. It was Jehovah, the Saviour to save His people from their sins, before whose face John went to prepare His way, announcing the axe at the root of the trees, and the kingdom just going to be set up. And even he declared, not for Pharisees and Sadducees. The Lord then by His ministry having attracted the crowds, for chapter 4 gives the whole public ministry of the Lord, gives to His disciples, but in the audience of all, what was the character of those who would have a place in the kingdom. But, save supposing the kingdom announced, there is not a word of Gospel in it. It is those who already there amongst the Jews were fit for the kingdom. So chapter 5: 25, 26, is the history of the Jews. The Lord was in the way with them. If need were, the end of Luke 12 proves it distinctly. And He tells His disciples how they were to behave in taking their place. Every Jew knew there was the olam hoveh (this age) under the law, and olam habba (the coming age) under Messiah. These are the rules for having part in the latter, the Father's name being withal revealed, but the kingdom not set up. He was rejected, and redemption came in, but of this we have nothing here.
As to details. It is clear He was not, as Jehovah-Messiah, come to set aside His own law, and His own prophets. He came to fulfil them -- not impose on others in continuance, but fulfil them. As I have said, of all the ceremonial part He was the substance and fulfilment. Then as to commandments, personally of course He fulfilled the Law. But even when He says: "But I say," He is not taking up the Law to spiritualise it. In two cases only, He takes up one of the Ten Commandments, murder and adultery, but only as essential parts of His own morality, and given as applying to the state of a man, not his acts, as all through, for this is His subject. And where He seems to change it, yet He fulfils it. Israel was divorced for their sins, yet He returns to God's original institution which was in the Law too, and will own Israel as Ish (man) and Hephzibah (beloved of God) making good God's own institution, when the governmental force of the Law has run its course, from Babylon till He takes His power and Israel has paid the last farthing. And breaking or annulling "one of the least commandments" is the same maintenance of the Law in
all its integrity, and "least" is merely fully enforcing it, for if Christ came to fulfil it, he went against it, was going against Jehovah, and the very thing He came for. But the word "least" is merely to answer to "least," for either it gives a measure and he who taught against the least would get in, beyond that not -- which is monstrous -- or else he who annulled a greater would be less than he, still in the kingdom. But this is not the thought. "Least" echoes "least," and it is maintaining every jot and tittle of the Law, even the smallest, which I fully believe, but to be fulfilled by Christ, not carried on, though many things in it may abide, but it must (genetai) never be set aside, but fulfilled by Christ as God's own word. But to say 'Christ only brought out the true contents of the Law,' is simply ignorance of what Christianity is, for grace and truth came by Him. The Law, as a rule, is what man should be for God -- Christianity is what God is for man, and God in Man, and that is our full pattern, and this in general character (not in redemption, and giving up self consequently man's part) -- we have in the Sermon on the Mount, far away from Law; chapter 5: 44-48. In this, Christ was in life before redemption. But for us the full character is also what He did in redemption; Ephesians 5:1.
The comment on 'To the ancients' is also quite wrong; Matthew 5:21 (for I read to the ancients," but it is only in words there the first time). He says 'Commentators are still divided on the construction here, whether the expression should be taken in the dative or ablative sense -- to the ancients, or by them. "It has been said," is clearly what is in the Law, though not all Decalogue. But Christ, though confining Himself to Jewish allusions, Sanhedrim, etc., gives His own full estimate, and, as I have said, takes up the person's state, not relative acts, which the Law did not, though the spiritual man -- "We know" -- may use the tenth commandment thus. If it was said by the ancients, there might be some ground, but Dr. Fairbairn justly takes it as "to," and I suppose the Lord alluded to glosses when He cited a commandment there is no ground for.
Page 230. "But I say unto you." 'Never on any occasion did Jesus place Himself in antagonism to Moses; and least of all could He do so here, immediately after having so emphatically repudiated the notion.' It has nothing to do with antagonism, speaking of the state and not merely the acts. Nor is it
'clearer light thrown on the meaning of its precepts.' When the Apostle would take up the Law to probe, he does not 'spiritualise' the sixth or seventh, but quotes the tenth commandment. All this is fancy.
Pages 232, 233. 'The Decalogue itself, and the legislation growing out of it, were in their form adapted to a provisional state of things; they had to serve the end of a disciplinary institution, and as such had to assume more both of an external and negative character. It was only what might have been expected in the progress of things -- when that which is perfect was come -- that while the law in its great principles of moral obligation and its binding power upon the conscience remained, these should have had an exhibition given to them somewhat corresponding to the noonday period of the church's history, and the sonlike freedom of her spiritual standing.' All is dreadfully vague. How does 'the law in its great principles of moral obligation, and its binding power on the conscience remain,' when it was 'imperfect, negative and provisional'? Moral obligation was before the Law. The Law comes as a measure and rule of it. If the authority and obligation to obey were not there, the Law could not have been given. The Law does not produce it as a principle, but gives a measure of it in fact, and puts righteousness on the ground of man's accomplishing it. It is the poor man's ignorance of this which falsifies all his views, and it is not merely 'good to be done' scarcely once, and then only as imitating their Father -- it is the state of soul. He says, 'The mind is turned considerably more upon the good that should be done, and less upon the evil to be shunned.' The measure of the Sermon on the Mount is perfect purity -- no ill-will -- a single eye -- in a word, a perfect inward state and motive as to man, and then being perfect as to love, as God is, in dealing with others. It has nothing to do with comparative degree.
Page 235. He says the Sermon on the Mount 'places the Christian on a much higher elevation than that possessed by ancient Israel as to a clear and comprehensive acquaintance with the obligations of moral duty.' His mind cannot get beyond obligations of moral duty. Was it the obligation of moral duty made Christ give Himself for us? Yet it is made expressly a pattern for us. The free activity of divine love does not enter his thoughts. No doubt He obeyed in doing it, but was it 'legal duty and nought else'? As to the Sabbath,
it was not instituted by law at all. Law took it up. The Lord's word is not 'It was imposed by law,' but "made for man." It was the sign of the covenant with Israel under the Law. At the beginning it was sanctified as God's rest. Man never entered in nature into that, and as he could not in nature, Christ passed the Sabbath in heaven or the grave, and resurrection, the base of our hope, became the base of the Lord's day -- earnest of a heavenly rest, not of the earth or nature, and that is most precious; but Creation-rest, or rest of God in Creation is impossible. This was proposed in law. Hence the Lord says, in a passage wholly perverted by Dr. Fairbairn, when they accused Him of breaking the Sabbath, "My Father worketh hitherto and I work." God cannot rest in sin, but grace in the Father and Son can work in the midst of it, and that is our part. And He had just gratuitously made the poor man (whose case represented the poor man under the Law) carry his bed on the Sabbath. What is remarkable is this -- under law no new particular institution or system was introduced in the details of Exodus or Leviticus, without introducing and insisting on the Sabbath. The truth is, it is an immense thing -- the sign of God's people having part in God's rest -- while in the New Testament, the Sabbath is never mentioned but to cast, so to speak, a slight on it. In the Sermon on the Mount it is not mentioned. There is the fact -- Christ would not call Himself superior to morality, He does to the Sabbath. He proved they were hypocrites, on their own ground, but what gave occasion to this provoking them in taking pains to slight their respect for this.
Nor (page 237) does the Lord ever refer that I remember, to 'legal authority for the Sabbath.' However wise it may be to give 'one day in seven,' it was never the ground of the Sabbath, but God's rest, God's people then having a part in it. And to rest when God worked, and to work when God rested, and talk of 'one day in seven being due to God' is losing sight of all its import. If it be God's work, we ought to work every day. If it be part in God's rest, we must have it where God's rest is -- this is gone in corrupted Creation. Jesus has given it us in Spirit in His resurrection, not as a law but introduced by redemption and death. But 'important interests of men' (page 236) is all Dr. Fairbairn can see. Therefore 'Its sacred repose must give way to the necessary demands of life, even animal life.' But the Lord was not approving the Pharisees,
but making them ashamed of their hypocrisy. Very likely they did right, but the Lord was making no 'enlarged intelligent rule' by it, but appealing to what they did, and was done, in the Temple itself. He never gives any instruction how to keep the Sabbath, only asserts "It is lawful to do good."
Page 238. 'The Sabbath yields, it must be observed, only for the performance of works not antagonistic, but homogeneous, to its nature.' What are works of men homogeneous to rest? "Made for man" then belongs to man! Why stone a man for gathering sticks then? But it is not 'for man,' but for One particular Person, the Son of Man is Lord of it to dispose of it. But would He say this of murder, stealing, parents, etc., in a word, of abiding moral obligations? And who is to put the limits? And what are the limits, if he has 'a right to order everything'? 'Made, as the Sabbath was, for man, there necessarily belongs to man, within certain limits, a regulating power in respect to its observance.' Where is it said 'The Lord transferred it from the last day of the week to the first'?
Page 239. 'It is a memorial of the paradise that has been lost, and a pledge of the paradise to be restored.' That is a joyous day, a hallowed rest! And if lost, never to be regained, no return to the tree of life, or entrance into the rest of God. This the Law proposed -- Do and live. Christ in death showed it could not be, and a heavenly rest could not be shown by God's rest in Creation, or founded on what ruled on that basis. But it was no 'memorial of paradise lost,' nor does Scripture ever hint, in any shape, at its being 'a pledge of the paradise to be restored.' And how the truth slips out! 'Restored' -- what Paradise could be restored? Is heaven and glory, a Paradise restored! He is in the first man on earth, and so looks for what can never be. Resurrection takes us into a new world, life, and scene. It restores nothing. It may be the base of an earthly rest of which the Sabbath was a sign, but that is another thing.
Page 240. 'Not only did our Lord affirm, that 'on these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets,' but that 'there is none other commandment greater than these' -- evidently meaning that in them was comprised all moral obligation.' A summary of law comprises all moral obligation! I refer to it as showing that the free activity of grace never enters into his mind, self-sacrifice never -- in a word, what is properly Christian, never. I admit that this comprises it all
as mere legal obligation, and all the Law and the prophets hang on them, but not Christianity. If a man walks in the Spirit, he will do it -- that is the Christian assertion, but because he is not under law.
Page 241. 'Christ affirmed, in connection with the two great comprehensive precepts of supreme love to God, and brotherly love to man, that if the commands were fulfilled, life in the highest sense, eternal life, would certain be inherited.' Now Christ carefully avoids, on the contrary, saying eternal life, though the young man did. And the assertion 'if the commands were fulfilled, eternal life would be inherited,' is very serious. It is "the gift of God through Jesus Christ," and "He that hath not the Son of God hath not life." It shews that he is out of the doctrine of Christianity altogether. When they asked what to do, He says, "This do, and thou shalt live, if thou wilt enter into life." They did ask concerning things to be done. But the Lord takes care to correct one, and assure him that there was none good but God, and the other that a neighbour was not to be looked for, but exhibited in active grace. But to say that 'on fulfilling those commands all right to the possession of life in God's kingdom has been suspended' is very serious, and that, when righteousness is to be attained to ground a title to eternal life, Christ points enquirers to the Law, is really the denial of all Gospel truth. And if 'the revelation of law was comprehensive of all righteousness,' how came it Paul would not have it, but God's instead -- not get his own perfected but another instead?
Page 242. "The law made nothing perfect." But he has no idea of the difference between obligation being enforced as founded on relationship, and the sovereign grace of God in redemption which has brought in a new thing, a new life, God's righteousness, and glory its result. It was not 'faulty as to man's relationship,' and speaks of nothing more, but revealed nothing of God's sovereign grace, in God laying a new foundation on what He did, and making that the rule. 'Christ had a mission ruled by the prescriptions of law. The work of Christ as Redeemer neither was, nor could be anything else than the triumph of righteousness for man over man's sin.' This statement is monstrous. Christ's mission ruled by the prescriptions of law! And His work of Redeemer nothing but the triumph of righteousness for man over man's sin! Is it not striking that, in speaking of Christ's work and redemption, no mention
of love or grace comes in? It is 'the prescriptions of law,' 'the triumph of righteousness over man's sin'!
Page 243. Save the fact of the sinlessness of Jesus, all Dorner's statement is false. He says, 'His spirit was full of peace and undisturbed serenity. He knew Himself to be committed to suffer, even to the cross, and He actually expired in the consciousness of having at once executed the purpose and maintained undisturbed His fellowship with God.' 'Jesus was conscious of no sin, just because He was no sinner. He was, though complete man, like God in sinless perfection; and though not like God incapable of being tempted, nor perfected from His birth, and so not in that sense holy, yet holy in the sense of preserving an innate purity and incorruptness, and through a quite normal development, in which the idea of a pure humanity comes at length to realisation and prevents the design of the world from remaining unaccomplished.' The design of the world was not in Jesus down here, but in Jesus risen and glorified, and Head over all. Here, and till He died, He was alone. He was perfect and, because He manifested God, rejected of men, and redemption was needed if any were to have a part with Him. And is it not singular that he can say 'undisturbed,' when the essence of the Cross was, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me"?
Page 245. 'Could such an one really be subject to the law? Was He not rather above it'? 'When His work of obedience was reaching its culmination, He was ready to perfect himself through the sacrifice of the cross.' As to being under the Law, not a word is needed. He was genomenos hupo tou nomou (born under the Law). Is He now, is the question. It is now we are connected with Him by redemption. 'To perfect Himself' is a very objectionable expression, as is indeed, 'Not in that sense holy.' He was as holy when born as all through.
Page 248. That Christ bore the curse of the Law is unquestionable, but the statement here I reject altogether -- 'On what could the stern necessity rest, but the bosom of law whose violated claims call for satisfaction?' Has God no claims, no judgment of sin till He has imposed a law? Scripture is clean and diligently against it. And even with this it is far from all -- He glorified God by His death, and obtained glory with God for man, which no satisfaction of claims of law could do. Law never promised it, nor gave a title to it. It is deplorable and low system.
Page 250. While holding the main point of a judicial act, and 'the cup that justice mixed,' and the real bearing of our sins, and holding to the importance of holding and expressing it as clearly and positively as possibly can be, it is needed for my peace and God's glory, making the mere curse of the Law, and its violation, the extent and measure of Christ's sacrifice, a most poor and lame statement. It is striking that the thought of a sacrificial victim, or the love of Christ in giving Himself for us, are wholly absent from his thoughts of Christ's death. A vague expression of the display of God's love in Christ is found, but the love of Christ the Victim, He who offered Himself up without spot to God, has no place at all, and, as a doctrine, this absence of all allusion to sacrifice, and only taking the curse of the Law (which is not immediately the idea of a sacrificial victim) makes the whole doctrinally most defective. The burnt-offering is lost -- the fullest, greatest character of sacrifice wholly gone, even the meat-offering disappears, and the sin-offering shorn of a vast part of its value, not alluded to at all, no sacrifice, nor the idea of sacrifice, but all that is alluded to only a partial fulfilment of the sin-offering. I repeat, the atoning, propitiatory, vicarious character of Christ's work, in presence of God's judgment of and against sin, His righteous judgment, Christ's bearing my sins there and consequently suffering, drinking the cup, cannot be too firmly held. All the fine-spun theories are only setting aside the truth. If Christ was doing atoning work for my sins, bearing them under the present judicial action of God's righteousness, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani, are the most precious words ever uttered. But if it was 'personal state, and pattern of devotedness' merely, or the like, then they are saying that the One Just Man was forsaken of God at the end, and His faith failed when fully tried (a mere blasphemy) and Stephen's death and many a poor saint's is much more perfect and beautiful. But faith knows that they were, in joy, because Christ could only utter them as bearing their sins. Then all is in its place -- the Just for the unjust, and they brought to God.
Page 253. 'Whatever distinctly belongs to the Christian Church -- whether as regards her light, her privileges, her obligations, or her prospects -- it springs from Christ as its living ground; it is entirely the result of what He Himself is and accomplished on earth.' What is 'springing from Christ as its living ground'? Nothing from Christ surely, but from
His death, i.e., all relationship between God and the first man, or effort to reclaim him closed, and he treated as lost. For Dr. Fairbairn, it is vaguely 'is and accomplished on earth.' Vagueness itself -- as different from Scripture as possible, but beyond ordinances, and the moral law, he is unable to get. The mystery hidden from ages and generations, or even what is heavenly he is ignorant of as the child unborn.
Pages 256, 257. Dr. Fairbairn, though he speaks of Paul at the end on the very lowest ground that he takes, the Galatians, never once gets on the ground of Paul's own teaching, and historically gets to the sheet and Cornelius (page 255) which did not touch the question of the Church. So 'The cycle of Christian instruction on the subject was completed by the explanation given in the Epistle to the Hebrews,' in which neither the Father nor the Church is ever mentioned (save chapter 12, as in heaven in time to come) and where Christians are seen on earth with a Christ (with whom they are not one in heaven) and the question is if a man can approach God, and it is shown how.
Page 264. 'Let a man examine himself (viz., as to his state and interest in Christ), and so let him eat of that bread and drink of that cup.' All right in general as to ordinances. I do not admit his theory as to sacraments, de facto it is true of the Lord's supper; but even here his habits of thought have misled him, and he is as usual inaccurate. If "examine himself" is 'as to his state and interest in Christ,' it could not be "and so eat," but "see if you are to eat," but it is not our question here. No doubt his views of baptism are the Reformation view. But they are surely false. He says it is 'not absolutely originative, or of itself conditioning and producing the first rise of life in the soul, but bringing it forth into distinct and formal connection with the service and kingdom of Christ.'
Page 266. His quotations (Acts 15:7-9; Romans 6:4, 5; Titus 3:5; 1 Peter 3:21; John 3:18-36; 2 Corinthians 10:17) have nothing to do with the matter, and do not speak of what he refers to, and those which do he cannot account for.
Page 267. He has no idea of the Gospel beyond 'the word of the kingdom,' and calls it 'the Gospel of Christ's glory.' He says: 'The grand ordinance, which has to do with the formation of Christ in the soul, or the actual participation of the life that is in Him, is this word of the kingdom -- the Gospel, as the apostle calls it, of Christ's glory'; 2 Corinthians 4:4.
Page 268. It is curious how the work of Christ in redemption is left out in the citation from Hare's 'Victory of Faith' -- strikingly so. Thus he adds 'what springs from faith secures the imperishable boon of eternal life.'
Pages 269, 271. Nothing can be more striking in its way than the manner in which the Apostle seeks to put in the strongest contrast, law and grace, law and faith, one being man for God, the other God for man, and the manner in which this book seeks to mix them up. 'The law of faith,' an expression of which the force is evident, makes faith a law because people ought to believe. He cannot deny that Christianity is carefully put in another way, still it is this, and this by the deplorable principle that there is no obedience but by law. So that "this is the work of God that ye believe" is that believing is a law. I admit men are bound to believe, but to make therefore faith itself a law is deplorable ignorance. So that 'The provision of grace and blessing in Christ, and the way in which this comes to be realised in the experience of men, has the essence and force of law' -- consequently "worketh wrath" if we are to believe an Apostle. The consequence is natural enough -- Christ 'at infinite cost has wrought out the plan of our salvation'!
Page 272. 'The state of spiritual persons substantially the same under the Old Testament and the New'! 'Higher spirituality really in Romans 7'! 'Complicated and delicate relations between Moses and Christ, law and grace, through which the experience of believers may be said to lie.' The Apostle is not very delicate -- you are an adulterer if you mix them, he says, and try to have both at a time, to say no more.
Page 273. 'There is a gradation only, not a contrast; and as under the old covenant the law-giving, was also the loving God, so under the new, the loving God is also the law-giving.' If it is a gradation only, there is no full final pardon possessed, so that the person is accepted "perfected for ever." The blood of bulls and goats could not take away sins. Romans 3 does not speak of past remission, but of remission, passing over in forbearance, and justice in doing it now manifested. There could be no remission really of sins but by the blood of Christ, and the righteousness not at all revealed, and, if real remission was by Christ's blood, there was no gradation. There were figures, and governmental forgiveness in details, forbearance (paresis) if you please, but righteousness in it was not revealed
at all -- it is, at this time. As to 'the transgression of the law being sin,' it is an abominable error against the most important declarations of Scripture. The call to holiness is not law, or if it be, a curse.
Page 274. 'St. Paul, in Galatians 5:13, 14, plainly identifies the love binding upon Christians with the love enjoined in the law.' Galatians teaches exactly the contrary. They wanted to be under law. Paul never showed such anguish as at this, and tells them that walking in love the Law was fulfilled, that they had to walk in the Spirit, and there was no law against it, and if they did they were not under it. The question is not whether the new man 'delights in the law and serves it,' but whether the Christian is under it, and whether it is by it he does love his neighbour.
Page 275. It is quite impossible to read Paul and believe we are under the Law. Nobody dreams we are not to obey, or may steal and murder. The question is, Are we under law? But it is not the Law which is dead. "We are dead to sin by the body of Christ," and that delivers us from sin, not the Law. We are sanctified to obedience. Paul gives no 'colour' to anything, but plainly and largely reasons on the point that the Law has power over a man as long as he lives, but that we are dead. Ephesians 5 merely appeals to the Law to show the importance God attached to that duty, motive and all. He does not say 'There is a sense in which we are not under it,' but that 'we are not under it at all,' and that we are under a curse if we are under works of law. And the passages are not isolated passages, but long reasonings as to the nature of Christianity, salvation, and holiness.
Page 276. 'That covenant of law, as actually proposed and settled by God, did not stand opposed to grace, but in subordination to grace, as revealed in a prior covenant, whose spiritual ends it was designed to promote.' This is bad. Either there are two covenants, the old and the new -- "the first" and "the second" -- or else it is the promise to Abraham, and then it is declared nothing could be added to it, that the Law had no place at all, came in by the bye, for an extra purpose, and there was an end of it.
Page 277. As usual, we have merely duty to man and God as the whole measure of Christian practice. But I notice it here because it is accompanied with what shows the total
ignorance of the truth on these points, which characterises the doctrine of the book, 'that law of God which revealed His righteousness for their direction and obedience.' This betrays the whole system. Paul was not ashamed of the Gospel, because therein the righteousness of God was revealed; Romans 1, so chapter 3: 20, 21, in formal and express contrast with the Law (verse 20). "But now the righteousness of God without the law" (choris nomou) "is manifested"; so verse 26, "To declare at this time his righteousness." It is as plain as possible. And further (page 278), 'The heart's innate tendency to alienation from God continued still to proceed in the face of the commands and threatenings of law.' This is all ignorance of the essential truth of the Gospel. 'It is this great question that the Apostle chiefly treats in the larger proportion of the passages referred to.' But 'larger' or smaller, does not the Apostle also treat of the Law as to practical godliness, and deliverance from the power of sin? In the Romans this is far more fully developed in chapter 5: 11 to chapter 8. 'It is of the law in this point of view, that he speaks of it as a minister of death -- of believers being no longer married to it or under it.' As to being married to it being in its condemning character, it is wholly and utterly false. It is deliverance, not pardon, nor righteousness. It is expressly that we may bring forth fruit to God, we are "to another." A husband has nothing to do with condemnation. It is all the grossest ignorance of the truth. Working concupiscence is not pronouncing condemnation. The motions of sin were by the Law -- sin was dead, sin revived; there is nothing of condemnation. And even "dead to law by law" in Galatians, is not to escape condemnation, but that we "might live to God." These quotations and statements on the face of them condemn the whole system. 'The end of the law for righteousness,' he says, 'is its reaching its proper aim in Christ.' This, though I do not insist on it, is also a blunder on the face of it, for Christ makes us reach its proper aim, not it, but I do not agree with the interpretation, but I do not treat it here. Again 'The moral law is done away' -- the Law is done away for the sake of having morality by Christ. How our being 'delivered from it that we may be brought into conformity,' etc., proves its 'eternal validity,' is hard to say. It had to be set aside because it could not produce this conformity but the contrary. It required it, but the Law did not make it right (Adam's law did) but required it because it was
right, but, being totally unable to effect it, was set aside, i.e., the Law had not any validity. Further, another thing was to produce what it could not do; but it is the common confusion of the writer. How being delivered from a thing can prove its 'eternal validity' is indeed hard to say.
Page 280. When he says: 'What was little more than hope before is realisation now,' is promise not law. Next, 'In a prior covenant of grace, it was linked to penalties, which admitted of no suspension or repeal.' Was ever such confusion? There was no covenant of grace. It was life on man's responsibility. Deliverance from Egypt was not only not a covenant of law, but no covenant at all, but a supreme act of power on God's part. All this is a fable. 'It was,' he says, 'educational; and in the same farm only that St. Paul, in various places, in Galatians, Ephesians 2:14-17; and Colossians 2:14-23 contended for its having been displaced or taken out of the way by the work of Christ -- he refers to the simply moral demands of the law as now, not less than formerly, binding on the consciences of men, to prevent any misunderstanding.' Here he refers to Galatians 5:13-22. It is a perverseness of mind which is extraordinary. The Galatians wanted to be under law. "Ye have been called unto liberty"; i.e., in grace, not law -- Sarah, not Hagar. "Only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another. For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." How to be got at? "This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh." And then, "But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law." This sets, he tells us, 'temporary adjuncts and shows under the law, which maintains all its force as to moral things; Ephesians 6:1-9; Colossians 3:14.' Now here only moral things are spoken of, and we are not under it. We are to walk in the Spirit, and then what the Law condemned will not be there, but by our not being under it at all. Ephesians 6:1-9 has nothing to do with the Law, good or bad, except the passage already referred to. What Colossians 3:14, has to say to it must be left to Dr. Fairbairn to find out. The passage speaks of putting off the old man and putting on the new, which is just what the Law had nothing to do with.
Page 282. He is quite right as to 'how the practice was to be secured,' when he says 'the law's precepts could not do it,' for he teaches us it was not to be secured by law but by grace.
Sin had dominion under law, and God's method was to make us dead, which put a total end to our connection with the Law, but, besides, adds an infinitely increased measure of godliness -- the character of God in redemption. But what follows here is monstrous. He says: 'Now there came the more excellent way of the Gospel -- the revelation of that love which is the fulfilling of the law, in the person of the New Head of humanity.' So sovereign love and grace in God and in Christ is fulfilling the Law! Where did the Law require a man to sacrifice himself for another, and bear his curse? Is God's love loving His neighbour as Himself? He says: 'Love was the reason of the law,' but love on a level or upwards, not love downwards, love to sinners, not giving up self. Again, 'Love is the best interpreter of God,' but it is God's free love, not duty, love to sinners. 'The law of eternal rectitude' -- but eternal rectitude is not law. It is the gross blunder of not seeing duty or obligation before law, and, in law, authority imposing it. Christ was no 'Head of humanity' till after His death. Perfect as He was, the Corn of Wheat abode alone -- no link could be formed; just as Adam was no head of a race till after his fall -- nor Christ till redemption was accomplished. But this closed the application of the Law, by the death of its willing Victim, for all those who have part in Him. It is this that Dr. Fairbairn is wholly ignorant of. God, sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, did what the Law could not do, no doubt, and the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made us free, and thereby the righteousness of the Law is fulfilled in us, but not by applying the Law, but in us who "walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." That is, the Law, which was a specific, well-known system of imposed righteousness, could not produce the effect, and God did it in another way -- and that 'proves we are under it'! But even here, we have none of the higher forms of Christianity, but only that what the Law could not do grace did. The counsels of God are not in the doctrinal statements of the Romans at all, but only individual justification and life, save just one link at the very end of them, to secure the believer; chapter 8: 28-30. And here we have nothing to do with law, but God for us -- not what we ought to be.
It is wearying incessantly to repeat that law is not the good that law proposes, but a form of imposing it on man who will not obey it, flesh not being subject to it. He says: 'Subject
to the good' -- to what good? It is simply bad in will, but is not subject to the Law of God, nor can be.
Pages 284, 285. These pages are just showing that law does not even answer the purpose, or meet the end Dr. Fairbairn proposes, and that the Spirit in His directive influence is Himself a living law. But here, as he states it, he is wrong, for without the written Word it opens the door to all fanaticism. But his principle of then bringing in law is directly against the positive assertion of Scripture -- as for example: "If ye be led of the Spirit ye are not under the law" -- and only an exhibition of the gross moral confusion of making duty and its imposition by law the same thing.
Page 288. 'This is the love of God, in order that we may keep His commandments -- hina tas enlolas autou teromen -- not that we do it as a fact, but that we may and should do it as a scope or aim. In so far as these are kept, does the love of God in us reach its proper destination.' He is wrong as to hina; John's use of it is wholly peculiar. The love of God will make us obey, and that is the genuine proof of love, but to say it is 'its destination' is most miserable. "We love him, because he first loved us."
Page 290. 'A condition of righteousness for which the law is not ordained, 1 Timothy 1:9. Not only not the world at large, but not even the most Christian nation in the world, has as yet approached such a condition.' It is not for a righteous man at all, and for every evil most useful for convicting of sin, and so used lawfully. But 'the world at large, or even the most Christian nation' -- what does he mean? His first point is not so and as the Law it works wrath. The second is all well. 'The Law provides what is needed to work conviction of shortcomings and sins,' etc.
The third is very bad. 'The imperfections too commonly cleaving to the work of grace in the redeemed, call for a certain coercive influence of law even for them, and for believers generally the two are thus mingled together. 'Let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear: for our God is a consuming fire.' Godly fear is not law, and fear and trembling, because God works in us in such a warfare, is not law.
Page 297. I do not much note this chapter. But 'The number of those within the Church whose preparation for the kingdom of God had been imperfect,' marks the same ignorance
of grace and power. Also 'For centuries there was no specific theological training generally adopted for such as aspired to become her guides in spiritual things.'
Page 366. He carefully avoids defining law, but placet ... quoniam, etc., ante definire quid sit officium (as the whole discussion will be about moral duty, the meaning of the term must be defined beforehand).
I have given in these notes a definition of it. I repeat it in substance. It is the rule of a constant course to be pursued, imposed by competent authority, and in the case of a moral, subordinate being, where another will is or may be in question, and is tested, enforced by sanction expressed or implied. If the nature and the prescribed rule go unquestionably together, then a sanction is not needed. It is a law of liberty. The Law is in the heart; so Christ; so even the Jews under the new covenant. When it is applied to material things, then the constant rule is imposed by power. These variations come from the difference of that to which the rule applies. The truth is, the imposition of a moral law, as to enforcing existing relationships, supposes a resisting will.
When he speaks of the promise, on which individual believers rested, modifying the Law, he introduces a principle which falsifies his book from one end to the other, and destroys the power and value of law. His only resource then is to contravene the Apostle's urgent statements.
Page 368. He is wrong in everything. Referring to 2 Corinthians 3, he says, 'Passing over the two or three earlier verses which call for no special consideration, the apostle, after stating at the close of verse 5 that his sufficiency was of God, adds, "who also has made us sufficient to be ministers," (not, as in the authorised version, "made us able ministers"), that is has qualified us for the work of ministers of the new covenant.' The first verses are all important. They contrast the Law and the Spirit -- the very thing he will not do. He is obliged to come back to them, as essential, lower down. It is the whole point of the chapter, verses 7-10 being a parenthesis. But, further, the absence of the article is not 'the sign of a well-known thing,' it is its presence which is -- it makes the word characteristic. Paul was a new-covenant minister, i.e., the new covenant characterised his ministry. So, "not of letter but of Spirit." So gramma and pneuma are essentially contrasted. Dr. Fairbairn's remarks here are puerile. He says:
'As letters are but the component parts of words, we may apply here what our Lord Himself affirmed of His words, "The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life."' Hence without pointing to any contrast between old and new, or outward and inward, we find Justin Martyr saying, in proof of the essential divinity of the Son and Spirit, 'Hear the passage.' No doubt letters compose words, but "Not of letter, but of the spirit" so contrasted is essential contrast. One sees now why he skims over the first verses, because there 'outward and inward' are specifically contrasted -- one being writing Christ by the Spirit of the living God on the heart, in contrast with that on tables. I do not hold it to be 'merely Old Testament,' but letter and Spirit -- the kind of ministry and work. He uses the Old Testament here, but he is not a minister of letter in it.
Page 369. 'A contrariety between Rabbinism and Christianity. Christianity demanded conversion, Rabbinism satisfied itself with instruction; Christianity insisted on a state of mind, Rabbinism on legality,' etc., etc. Rabbinism or Christianity! It is curious how in this contrast Christ and the revelation of Christ (the whole subject of the Apostle) is wholly left out. 'The will of God a state of mind'! Anything but Him. And he does not see, while I agree it is not old in contrast with new, that letter, if more than a history, is always law, or claim outside us. The Apostle is using the Old Testament here, but making the contrast of Christ, whom Dr. Fairbairn leaves wholly out, and Christ graven by the Holy Ghost on the heart, with ink and tables of stone. Glad tidings never can be law, nor law glad tidings. The Law was ordained for life in saying, "Do and live," but man being what he was, when known as spiritual and not till then was death. In Christ, or the Gospel, when known spiritually death -- the letter always kills. Paul's ministry could be a savour to death, because to some it was rejected mercy -- a rejected Christ. But the Law, spiritually known, and, as I have said, so only indeed, was death in the conscience.
Page 372. He does not know where he is. He says, 'The law, contemplated in the spirit of Rabbinism, is called a ministration of death, because, in its native tendency and operation, certain to prove the occasion of death.' I agree it is as Romans 7, but if 'the law in its native tendency and operation was certain to prove the occasion of death,' it did not want Rabbinism to make it so. It is too powerful for him to
get rid of. The criticisms here are immaterial -- 'the ministration of death in the letter, should be ministration of death engraved in letters.' Nor do I the least agree with the view of what regards Moses' face; Exodus 34:34 is, I think, quite conclusive, and indeed the whole passage. Dr. Fairbairn says, 'The shining gradually vanished away, till brightened up afresh be renewed intercourse with Heaven.' But it is immaterial. The Law as given of God, and His glory reflected in it as far as it could be, was a ministration of death and condemnation 'in its native tendency and operation.' And Moses was asked to hide the glory. But the Apostle's or Gospel ministry was righteousness, and the Spirit which was received by the hearing of faith, and the Law is not of faith.
Page 374. The Apostle (2 Corinthians 3:8), is clearly speaking of the Spirit, though in His power of engraving Christ on the heart, and giving its true power to the Old Testament in the soul. Dr. Fairbairn would make it 'spirit,' not 'Holy Ghost,' and cites Galatians 3:5. But there also it is clearly "the Spirit" itself; but of this Dr. F. can know nothing on his system. What is "The Spirit of the living God," verse 3? He says, 'He who ministereth to you the Spirit, points not to the apostle as a minister of the new covenant, but to God or Christ: it is He alone who can minister, in the sense of bestowing the Holy Spirit.' But, "Received ye the Spirit by the works of the Law, or by the hearing of faith?" makes Dr. F.'s interpretation flat nonsense. And what is "The Lord the Spirit "by his own translation?
Page 375. This page is somewhat curious. He says, citing verses 9, 10, 'The law in the letter is here presented in its condemnatory, instead of its killing, aspect. Accordingly on the other side righteousness is exhibited as the counterpart brought in by the Gospel.' The Law, man being what he is, is condemnation as before death. The Gospel brings in righteousness. Dr. F. does not tell us what righteousness, but no matter. One brings death and condemnation -- the other, righteousness. Why, that is all -- we say. And Dr. F. cannot help it, for there it is. I only remark, it was not Rabbinism. That did not shine in the face of Moses. It was, as given of God, pure, and coming with all the glory it could have as coming from Him; and, further, with all the mercy that could come with it from sovereign goodness -- all God's goodness, not being redemption and atonement. The first time Moses
came, we hear nothing of his face shining -- the Law never got, purely as such, into the camp at all. Now God retired into His own sovereign mercy (on Moses' intercession), speaks to Moses face to face, and then, making him go up again, makes all His goodness pass before him -- only He will not justify the guilty, as Moses could not also make intercession for them. It was still law. That is, all-patient mercy, and pardon as a present thing with law maintained, was condemnation and death. There it stands out, with no Rabbinism, no false interpretation, but law, set up by God in the glory it came in from Him, is death and condemnation. If I see the glory in the face of Jesus Christ, it is when He has borne my sins, and though the glory of God in all its brightness is the proof of my salvation and brings me there, that is what Dr. Fairbairn has not seen.
Page 376. Here is only to remark the laborious effort to get rid, from his own premises, as what could not be, of what the Apostle formally says was. It was the Law given by God -- no mistake -- were it not, it could not condemn, nor give death. The glory was shown in the face of Moses. It was not the relationships the Decalogue sanctioned, but the Law which sanctioned them which was done away, and specifically so graven on stones -- was not that the Law taking in, no doubt, the whole system, as he has often said that was the centre, for the whole system was what was to be done away -- it was not the Law, but law which was established by faith, but not as a system under which man was then put, for the Law is not of faith, and Christianity did establish fully its authority, but showed it was death and condemnation. And Christ bearing the curse, nothing could so seal its authority, and the claim and title of God in it, but did not put us under it, but took us from under it when we were. Now we are delivered from the Law, having died in that in which we were held, are dead to the Law by the body of Christ, the Law ruling only while life lasts. He says: 'The law if viewed in its proper connection, and kept in the place designed for it by the lawgiver.' What was its proper connection and character, if not when given by Moses directly from God, with his face shining? 'Moses declares,' he tells us, 'if the people hearkened to it they should live.' No doubt if -- but flesh is not "subject to the Law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God." Christ told the young man so, then detected
his heart, and, when His disciples wondering said to Him, 'Then no one can be saved,' He assented saying, "With man it is impossible, but with God all things are possible." Ah! When will man believe it? His reason is strange -- he says: 'The law could only be the occasion of more certain and hopeless perdition to men.' So that if a man kept a law of perfect love to God, and one's neighbour as oneself, why should not he live? Of course he would! But it could only be the cause of perdition, which the Apostle therefore calls "A ministration of death and condemnation." If it was 'imaged in Moses,' why was it to pass away?
As to law being established 'in relation to the antecedent covenant of promise,' it is a useless effort to argue against Scripture. A confirmed promise none can annul or add to. It could not be tacked on to it, says the Apostle; on the contrary, "Cast out the bondwoman and her son."
Page 378. 'The direct object of the veil on Moses' face was to conceal from the view of the people the gradual waning and disappearance of the supernatural brightness of his skin.' Besides what I have said, the whole argument of the Apostle rests on the glory being hid in Moses' case -- he veiled it that they should not see to the end of it. There is no veil on the glory of Christ. The rest is all immaterial, though all wrong. Moses was veiled -- the glory is not, in Christ the veil is gone, but is on their hearts. When the Jews turn to the Lord, the veil shall be taken away from their hearts, and the object of the Old Testament clear, just as Moses took it off when he turned to the Lord. It is a most beautiful allusion, and the force of the passage perfectly clear.
Page 380. His remarks on verse 14 are all nonsense. He says 'It was an imperfect state of things and involved a measure of blame; but the blame lay with the people, not with Moses.' Nobody says it was Moses' fault. The people could not bear the Law with the least revelation of God's glory, or that glory so revealed have rested in the letter, and did not see Christ in it. The glory was always, though an imperfect reflection of it, behind the veil, but, the system being legal, the glory of God in any way was intolerable to man -- the veil was hence on it -- in Christ it is taken away, but rests yet on Israel's heart, who see not the glory of Christ in the Word. But all he says is wrong -- the veil is not now on the glory, but on Israel's heart. 'Moses practising reserve,' is all nonsense. Israel could not
bear to see, and the entire veiling of the glory is the statement. Now they are blinded, not the glory veiled. What is done away is shown by the open, unveiled face in Christ. No doubt the old covenant is done away, or the veil would still be there. But, alas! it is still sadly on Dr. Fairbairn. As to mere transition, I have no objection to 'not being unveiled to them,' that 'it' (the covenant) 'is done away in Christ.' But that is the Covenant of the Law. I believe verse 7 does refer to verse 6. And katoptrizomenoi, is not I believe a mirror, save in etymology, at all; but seeing fully into the glory as a man sees himself in a mirror, just as he is seen clearly and fully -- himself -- so we the glory. But on all this I have no contest. But the quotation from Philo (neither would I see mirrored in any other), fully proves the sense I give to katoptrizomai.
Page 383. 'The Gospel reveals what He is and has done, and thereby unfolds His glory.' 'What He is and has done, and thereby,' shows Dr. F. has not seized the present glory in which Christ is, as Paul saw Him, as the present thing revealed, result of work though possessed before the world was. He says, 'We are transformed into the same image, namely, of Christ's glory seen in the mirror of His Gospel' -- but it is "the gospel of his glory." Paul's doctrine Dr. F. has not an idea of.
Page 386. The sense of ean me as elsewhere, is 'nor in any way but.'
Page 388. This is all delusion too, 'Peter having gone as a sinner to Christ for justification, and still finding himself in the condition of a sinner, had fallen back again upon observances of law for what was needed. Could Christ possibly in such a way be a minister of sin? For, if failing thus to remove its guilt, in behalf of those who trusted in Him, He necessarily ministered to its interests.' Why if Christ failed to justify, did He 'minister to the interests of sin?' The Law failed to justify -- did it 'minister to the interests of sin'? Me genoito. It is what Dr. F. is writing against; and if that were all, I agree. The whole thing is plain. If he built again the things he destroyed, he made himself a transgressor in destroying them. If he went back to the Law after Christ, he was wrong in leaving the Law to go to Him, and Christ had made him do it and transgress. That was the horrid absurdity. As to ara, the ancient MSS. have not accents; it is a question of interpretation.
Page 389. By law he died to law, but what does 'in the interest of the law he died to it' mean? The Law killed him, but then he was dead to it. Nothing simpler -- save me from commentators! But if that were all, he was condemned as well as dead, and the real way of it was he was crucified with Christ. So sin had died, for he, the sinner in flesh, was dead, yet he lived, but not he, but Christ who is risen in him. When will these people understand?
Pages 392, 393. We have now what shows one side of the total failure, in divine truth, of the whole system, where even persons little spiritually enlightened have seen it. He says the Law 'making sin into a transgression so that what was before not a transgression might now become one, is a somewhat arbitrary distinction, as if sin and transgression differed materially from each other.' Clearly the commandment turned sin into transgression. My child may have a bad habit of running out, but if I forbid him it is a transgression, a despising my authority. Thus sin by the commandment became exceeding sinful. It could not if it was not there before it. But there is no excuse here. He owns anomia means lawlessness, but says 'it equals transgression.' But lawlessness does not mean transgression, nor does anomia (lawlessness) mean parabasis nomou (transgression of law). So little is this the case that those who have sinned anomos (lawless) are contrasted with those who have sinned under law, and the result is different -- those are said to perish, these to be judged by law. Law cannot create sin, nor God do anything to produce it. But law does produce transgression, and it is positively said "the law entered that the offence might abound," and then to reach out where no law was, but where sin abounded, grace did much more abound. Where no law is, there is no transgression, but he carefully proves that sin was in the world until the Law, and it is his ground for insisting that grace must reach therefore where law was not, taking Adam and Christ, not Moses. Further, there is no real doubt of the sense of charin (for the sake of). He cannot insist on the explanation of the Fathers for the word, when he admits that the passage proves them wrong, so that he does not venture to take it so. The doctrine is what they are all afraid of foolishly. They would have it, 'The law was given, that the Jews might not be allowed to live without check, and glide into the extreme of wickedness,' etc., etc.
Page 394. All these things are arguing against the Apostle. He says: 'While the covenant of promise was in a provisional state, travelling on to its accomplishment, the law was needed and was given as an outstanding revelation; but when the more perfect state of things pointed to in the promise entered, the other would cease to occupy the place which had previously belonged to it.' Added for transgressions till the Seed should come, and then no longer under it, says the Apostle -- means 'should cease to occupy the place which had previously belonged to it,' says Dr. Fairbairn. As to verse 20, he is substantially right.
Page 397. 'The Apostle had said that the covenant of grace or promise bestowed life.' But he had not said the promise gave life, but "The just shall live by faith," and in the previous chapter he says, "Christ lives in me" -- not promise -- and when he lives by faith on Him objectively; crucified with Him, not man living by promises. The nearest to it is 2 Peter 1: 4 But this only shows his confusion, the little sense of a real communication of life. It is a figure. What the Apostle is at is, if it could have given life, righteousness should have been by it. Dr. F. says: 'If a law were given which could have given life, means a law which could, or, a law such as could possess the power of giving life.'
Page 399. I doubt the sense of eis, but have no contest on it. He says: 'Verse 22, The eis, for, -- for the faith which was going to be revealed -- is to be taken ethically, denoting the aim or destination which the law, in this respect, was intended to serve: to the intent, that we should pass over into the state of faith.' But the point of the Apostle is that Christ being come, or faith, we are no longer under it at all, but under another person -- the Law being personified. It is not the fact of life or not -- they were heirs (believers under law) but no better than slaves who had their bidding to do. But they were under Another now.
Page 401. But here he is all wrong still. He says: 'The heir, during the period of his childhood, because wanting the mind necessary to make the proper use of the inheritance, is placed under guardians and stewards, in a virtual position of servitude, till the time set by his father for his entering on the possession. Of quite a similar nature, the Apostle affirms, was the state of men in pre-Christian times: We too, says he, identifying himself with them, when we were children, were
kept in bondage under the rudiments of the world.' It is neither 'the state of men,' nor 'entering into possession.' We have nothing of the inheritance but the earnest. And it is, in either case, heirs -- believers; but the Jewish believer under law, and the Christian become a son. Judaism was altogether the rudiments of the world adapted to man alive here -- the Decalogue itself even -- but the whole system of days, sacrifices, ordinances, so that after the Cross, where the history of the first man was finished morally (at the end of the world) to return to them, when no longer figures, was to return to heathenism; Galations 4:8-10. Chrysostom and Theodoret we may leave in the sun and the moon; he says they held the festivals were 'ruled by the course of the sun and moon.'
Page 403. If ever a man knew how to ruin the beauty of Scripture, and the force of the Spirit's arguments, it is this man. He says: 'The threatenings of the Law against sin, relate to Gentile as well as Jew; and no otherwise was redemption possible for mankind than by our Lord's perfect submission, in their behalf, to its demands and penalties.' The whole gist of the Apostle's argument is that they, Gentiles, wanted to put themselves under law. The Apostle shows that not only was Christ born a man, for men, of a woman, where sin had come in, but under law to redeem and deliver them that were under it, where they were wanting to put themselves. And all is swamped in Gentiles being under it as much as Jews. It is really deplorable. 'The heart and substance of the requirements of Sinai, or the law, belonged to man as man'! A revelation -- and I suppose the Law at Sinai was a revelation -- belongs to those to whom it was sent. It was not sent to the Gentiles. So the Apostle says, "The Gentiles, not having law, are a law unto themselves." All this is nothing for the legalist -- he must have his theory, and know better than God how to deal with man. Besides, before, there was grace in it, God having redeemed Israel out of Egypt. Had he redeemed the Gentiles too?
Again, 'The spiritual union through faith of the soul with Christ.' Union is not through faith itself; but that is a common error, but one flowing from not believing in the Spirit -- one great spring of all this. It is not 'The Spirit of sonship' as he quotes, but "The Spirit of his Son."
Romans 3:20 says exactly the contrary to what Dr. F. says. Having proved all Gentiles sinners by other proofs -- Creation,
and the knowledge they had of God -- he takes up the Law, and says (so Dr. F. admits, page 409, or rather proves), look at that character, "not one righteous," etc. Now by your own pretensions, what the Law says it says to those under it -- there is your mouth, and so every mouth stopped. If the Apostle had told the Jews that the Gentiles had the Law, and so were proved guilty, they would have laughed in his face, so much the rather that he had just been insisting on their privileges, and the chief, the oracles of God, and shown the Gentiles sinning without law, and so perishing, while those under it would be judged by it -- a distinction without a difference, and all labour in vain on Dr. F.'s theory. How easy, if only this theory had been set up, to convince the Gentiles and prove them without excuse! But God was too wise and holy to convict them by that which they had not got. God may use it now in wielding it as a sword to the conscience, but not hold guilty under it those that had not got it.
Page 404. Citing Galatians 5:13-15, he says: 'For ye were called for freedom, called that you might be free' -- epi with the dative, is the condition characteristic of the thing; but that is no matter. The only pity is that he did not go on to verses 16-18, which upset his whole argument, de fond en comble. He says: 'Though the external bond and discipline of the law is gone, its spirit ever lives, and the law speaks as much as ever to the conscience of the believer.'
Page 405. Romans 2:13-15, is a parenthetic paragraph by itself. But why add to Scripture. The Word and Spirit say absolutely "Without law" -- Dr. F. says, 'Without the written law' -- why add 'written'? Law does not bring in justification in the Christian faith -- we are justified by faith, not by works of law which bring a curse -- but that a man who keeps the Law is justified, of course he is, which a hearer and breaker is not, nothing can be more simple. That any kept it (save the Lord) is another question. The absence of the article in both cases makes it characteristic.
Page 407. 'Law-doing arises from the impulse and energy of the moral faculty, naturally implanted in man,' i.e., in those cases Gentiles acted under conscience not law.
Page 409. 'Whatever the law says concerning sin and transgression, it speaks or addresses to those who are in it; that is who stand within its bonds and obligations ... . Primarily to them, though by no means exclusively.' But it is carefully
proved to be only to Jews, and clearly -- and then Dr. F. says, 'but not exclusively.' What a testimony to the system! Paul, the Word as he shows, refers it to Jews. Dr. F. reasons thereupon to show on his reasons why it is to others too. And it is monstrous that the charges of the Law should a fortiori be applied to those who had not the Law to enlighten them. It is impossible to read a greater moral perversion. He says, 'If the law could pronounce charges of guilt on those who had the advantage of its light, how much more (a fortiori) might like charges be brought against those who lived beyond its pale!' And just see the reason, 'What the Law says, it says to those under the Law' (i.e., not to others) 'that every mouth may be stopped.' And to make the absurdity more evident Dr. F. will have 'in order that every mouth may be stopped, Jew as well as Gentile, and Gentile as well as Jew, and all the world become liable to punishment with God,' etc. God has given His law to Jews, that Gentiles, who have not got it, may have their mouth stopped, and all the world become liable to punishment for what they had never heard! Could moral absurdity go further? I agree with "in order that," but it makes his reasoning absurd. Nor does faith in the Person of Christ need such preparation. Itself produces conviction, though the other be most legitimate and useful. Faith in His work it would. But John 16 proves the assertion false, and the reasoning that Gentiles are without excuse. Natural conscience, law, or Christ may all be used. He says: 'Where the law failed to produce conviction of sin, and a sense of deserved condemnation, there also failed the requisite preparation for the faith of Christ, and still continues to do so.'
Of course this sets him all wrong (page 410) as to the dioti (because); Romans 3:20. "Because" or "therefore" makes little matter. It is a resumption of the whole matter as the Apostle's illatives often are, and the real cause is summed up in the "for" (gar) which follows. His own mind resumes the whole with, "Because" (I tell you all this, applying the Law to those who pretend the most, and to have righteousness, and be justified by it, because) "by works of law shall no flesh be justified"; for just see what it does -- it is the means of knowing sin. Does making a man's conscience guilty justify him? Only it is law in principle, and as often shown, continually with the Apostle, because it is a principle, only the exhibition of the principle was essentially at Sinai.
Pages 412 - 414. I have nothing to object to here, save the generalities of the system. Romans 5:12 to chapter 8, I can consider in its place.
Page 415. Romans 5:12. The "wherefore" connects itself, I do not doubt, with what immediately precedes, as verses 6 and 11. But it is, as constantly in Paul, a recommencing another part of the subject, or the general principle of what follows. Half his "Fors" (gar) are not immediately illative, but from the state of the general subject in his mind giving a new aspect of it. So "Wherefore" here (dia touto, for this [cause]). The point is to bring not personal faults imputable, but the state of men, to which individual faults have been added, and by law offences. It is not what I have done, but what and where I am -- "I know that in me," not "I know all have sinned." One is culpability, the other condition through the head (each adding his own sins). It is clear that Adam's sin is the procuring cause of death, not only it is said in Genesis, but clearly stated here, but that does not decide the sense of eph ho (for that), i.e., whether it is an additional thought, or only refers back. "For that all have sinned" may be in Adam (as Levi paid tithes in Abraham), or it may be what characterises themselves, though not the original cause. "For that" (eph ho) is not the original cause, or causa causans. We are called "to" (epi) sanctification, not the cause of our call, but what is involved in and characterises it. It has nothing to do with Pelagianism. What he says on verse 13, takes the ground he calls Pelagianism. He says: 'Plainly, it is the relation of mankind to Adam in his sinfulness, not their own personal sin, which is asserted to be the procuring cause of death to mankind; and hence the absolute universality of death, the sin that caused it being in God's reckoning the sin of humanity, and the wages of that sin, consequently men's common heritage.'
"Who had not sinned after," etc., is a quotation from Hosea 6:7. They, like Adam have transgressed the covenant; Israel had -- up to the Law they had not, but sin and death were there, all the same, from Adam to Moses, only it could not be specifically put to account (ouk ellogeitai) as transgression, when there is no law (me ontos nomou), no law existing which forbad it. They perished without law (anomos), and in their state, and acts, were without excuse. Law and ellogeitai are the correlatives. Sin was there and death proved it, law not
existing -- they had not, like Adam, transgressed a covenant, nor like Israel. Dr. F. is simply, as usual, arguing against the Apostle. Why from Adam to Moses only, if it was not a question of law or not? Are there not children now, and under the law of Moses over whom death reigned? All this is theology. Hence, when he says, 'Before the law as well as after it' (page 418), he shows he has got off the Apostle's ground altogether, for he says "until the law," which has no sense but by contrast of law, and makes 'as well as after it' nonsense as to the argument. And the "nevertheless" (alla -- 'a strong adversative,' says Dr. F.) proves that it is not 'two reasons, sin and death,' but though sin is not put to account (ellogeitai) no law existing, nevertheless death proved sin was there. Man was ruined and perished in sin, far from God, though there was no law to make specific imputation. They were all guilty and without excuse. The "For that" (eph ho) referring to each is not affected by the question of children more than chapter 3: 23. The rest of this section is partly wrong partly right, but nothing to remark. Condemnation, or judgment, is for sins, not for sin -- these are judged according to the deeds done in the body, besides that we are all perishing, ruined, far from God, wrath on us, and just wrath. I do not doubt myself that all children dying, as such, are saved, but by Christ, according to Matthew 18.
Page 419. This is a mere sophism arising from taking 'reckoned' in two senses -- "reckoned sin" means considered as such, sin reckoned is put to account as such. But in the sense of Dr. F.'s sentence Paul does not speak of it at all. He says: 'Paul is speaking, not of degrees of culpability, but of what might or might not be reckoned sin, and, as such, deserving of death.' Instead of the difference of hamartia (sin) and parabasis (transgression) being merely verbal, it is of immense importance as distinguishing a principle working in us, which transgression parabasis) can never be; when used for an actual sin, it may or may not be, at least taking parabasis as being parabasis nomou (transgression of law). Sins may be without law (anomos) the Apostle tells us, or under law, en nomo; but hamartia (sin) is used for that which produces (kateirgasato) lust (epithumian). But of all this Dr. F. understands absolutely nothing. Nor is it a question of 'less culpable,' though that be in some respects true (Luke 12:47, 48), but of particular putting to account where there is no
commandment or law. The only question here is, is hamartia (sin) simply the root or evil nature, as in the general argument of this part of Romans, or, this being then the general idea, that there is not putting to account as a forbidden thing, though the thing -- sin -- be there? More, I apprehend, the latter, but I leave the question there; compare chapter 7: 7, reading "But," not "Nay." It is not here a question of the government of God, as the Deluge, or mark on Cain, but the formal ground of God's reckoning with man. That all are guilty is clear, and have sinned, and will be judged, if not cleansed, in that day when God judges the secrets of the heart.
Hodge's statement, 'If there is no sin without law, there can be no imputation of sin. As, however, sin was imputed as men were sinners, it follows there must be some more comprehensive law in virtue of which they were so regarded and treated,' is a mere petitio principii, that there is no sin without law. Indeed there is no logic in the sentence, for he again takes for granted that sin was imputed, but the parts do not hang together. He really is proving that there is a law. His proof is -- 'sin was imputed' -- the other part should be, 'but no sin is imputed without law, therefore there was a law,' but that is not the other part, but 'there is no sin without law' which proves nothing, but assumes all in question, for all admit there was sin between Adam and Moses. Consequently, the second part is useless, for if sin proves law, there is no need to bring in imputation. Whatever it means, the Apostle says, "It is not imputed where there is no law." The reasoning is this: No sin without law, if no sin otherwise, therefore no law, no imputation, but there is imputation, therefore there is sin, i.e., there is law. But this first begs the question as to sin and law. Next the Apostle's statement is, "Sin was in the world, but no imputation, because no law" (me ontos nomou) absolutely. Further as already quoted, he speaks of sinning (anomos), justly translated "without law," for they perish anomos. Only Hodge, it appears, makes it Adam's sin. But Dr. F.'s answer is none -- 'all sinned in Adam.' It is no proof that sin was in the world from Adam to Moses, and since. That is a proof that they sinned out of Adam. But, apart also from them, death has reigned, but if it was for Adam's sin, it was no proof that sin was in the world, unless it were Adam's sin, with Dr. Hodge. It is the fruit of attempting to
get out of or into a passage the contrary of what it teaches. Verses 15-17 are an appeal if grace should not be as large as sin, or larger, including offences brought in by law, but reaching out as by one offence to all (though not in result) by one righteousness.
Page 420. The middle paragraph is all well; also from verses 13-17 is the parenthesis. The result is this: the Apostle, here speaking of ways and dispensations, is insisting that you must go up to the two heads (the Law only coming in by the bye) that sin was in the world by Adam when the Law was not there, and that the grace and gift by grace must go as wide or wider. And this is used to show that the Law, or a law, must have been there all the time! Whereas the very point as to law is, that all really resting on the two great heads, the Law merely came in by the bye, for a specific object between the two, that object being, Paul says, to make the offence abound. Dr. Fairbairn says not. Paul, making carefully still the difference between the existence of sin and the Law, says the Law entered that the offence might abound, but where sin abounded (which was where every child of Adam was, and not merely under law come in by the bye) grace might much more abound. Certainly it was not to produce sins, but it was in order that (hina -- not merely a knowledge of its effect which makes indeed little difference) the offence might abound, and the conviction of sin more clear, and its character worse.
There are three steps in sin, all flowing from confidence lost in God, selfwill and lust, transgression (law) enmity against God, always true, fully proved in Christ's rejection, the refusal of grace itself. It is a mere effort to destroy the Apostle's whole argument. I repeat, sin becomes excessively sinful by the commandment, and must therefore be there before it comes.
Page 421. 'By the very faith which justifies him, the believer is vitally united to Christ,' he says. Faith does not unite to Christ, however death to sin and life in Him is our portion. We cannot expect Dr. Fairbairn to be clear on these subjects. I only note in passing (page 422), 'The law is the revelation of God's pure righteousness'; again, it is man's if fulfilled. And notice another thing running all through, that life is not really life but 'a general effect on the heart.' Hence it leads to 'ultimate perfection in holiness.' This is just Wesleyan doctrine. Romans 6 just shows that the Law being done with, obedience to God remains, or slavery to sin. It put
the Law for practice in the strongest light as gone, and showing what takes the place of it, death of flesh or to sin, life in Christ, and obedience to God, in practical righteousness -- only there is no 'attaining righteousness' as Dr. F. says. Righteousness has its fruit in holiness. It is all muddy, but no matter. No doubt 'obedience supposes an authoritative rule,' but the Apostle is enquiring what it is when it is not law. And I wholly deny that 'sin is just a deviation from such a rule.' Sin is having a will of one's own instead of obedience. The Law may give the things in which we are to obey, and on certain principles, but obedience is to a person, to God, and righteousness. But if 'I am freed' (Calvin) 'from subjection to the law,' how am I under it? We have had dispensational law in Romans 5:12, to the end, in chapter 6, death to put an end to sin when not under law, and so free to give ourselves entirely to God, as alive in Christ. And now we come to experimental treating of law in chapter 7.
And here it is better to state the great principle of the chapter, to make the details plain. The believer, according to chapter 6, is dead, but the Law has dominion over a man as long as he lives; hence, we having died with Christ are delivered from it. This he illustrates by the law of marriage. You cannot have two husbands (The Law and Christ at once -- it is adultery -- two authorities, two masters) death has freed us from the first, and we are to Christ risen, not to law. Then we have the experience of the renewed soul under the first, or law, and only under law, in which state sin reigns, and he cannot do good if he would, and looks not for progress but deliverance, and finds it in Christ. Though the two natures still remain, chapter 8 is the state of liberty. Dr. F. would tell us that the reign of sin under law, captivity to it, and impossibility to do good even when we would, is a high spiritual state. What then is a low one? There is no lusting against the Spirit here; when we are led of that, the Apostle tells us we are not under law. Further the state described is "when we were" in the flesh, implying we are not -- not, mind, the flesh working in us, but we in it. The Christian state is contrasted in chapter 8, "Ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you." In chapter 7 we are captive "sold under sin" -- a high spiritual state, Dr. F. says; in chapter 8 "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free" -- a low one, I suppose And what the Law could not do
(what we have exclusively described, in chapter 7, in the wretched man) God has done when Christ was made sin, a sacrifice for sin, sin in the flesh is condemned -- was then -- and we are really free. And note in chapters 6 and 7, we have nothing to do with justification, but death, life, and practice. Let us see the details.
Pages 426, 427. All quite true and clear enough; he says, 'The leading object of the apostle in this section (Romans 7) is to bring out precisely the relation of the believer to the law, with the view at once of establishing it, and of showing that he is n
ot under it (chapter 3: 31; chapter 6: 14), but, on the contrary, is freed from it, or dead to it?' 'But' (page 428) 'what in this connection is to be understood by the law? The law of which the apostle speaks is one that penetrates into the inmost soul, and one's relation to which determines the whole question of one's peace and hope toward God. It is of the law as the rule of God's righteous government that he speaks; the law as the sum of moral and religious duty.' Now it is hopeless to expect Dr. F. to get out of the routine of theology and men, but the Apostle is speaking, and is so all through (though the law of Moses be the grand example) of law as a principle or system of dealing -- thus "When there is no law" (me ontos nomou) and "Law came in" (nomos pareiselthen), and very many such passages. Of this Dr. F. does not understand one word, and it is the whole question. He does not speak of "the Law" at all, but of "law."
Page 429. All this page discusses history -- Paul, the principle of law. But it is not because 'it presents the terms to which men are naturally bound,' which it does do, but because it presents them under the form of law, and more than that here, not conduct but state. As regards the former and such righteousness of law Paul was blameless, but as forbidding lust, nothing to do with grace at all, but forbidding what man was now in nature -- this is the whole matter here. The Law might as well have said to man, a sinner, you must not be a man -- for man lusts. Give him redemption and a new nature -- then indeed there is deliverance, but without it, death.
Page 430. 'The law holds over men, merely, as such, an indefeasible claim to their fealty and obedience.' An indefeasible claim surely as long as they live. But the Apostle's ground is that they are dead, and the Law only rules a man as long as he lives. We do not live of Adam now. Then we were utterly
lawless, or under law; but in Christ to God, and Christ's death, in whom we died, has wholly for faith delivered us -- we are not in flesh but in Spirit. But of this, of course, Dr. F. understands not one word, otherwise what he says at the commencement of the page is true, but we have ceased to be children of nature. And all is fair enough, except as to 'believers under law,' whom Paul does not put on the same ground, but exactly the contrary, and very carefully, in Galatians 4, on the very point in question here. It is the same perpetual history of not knowing what law means. The question is not whether we are in a state of mere nature or not, but whether we have the Spirit, or are we under the Law. A man simply in a state of nature is lawless, but a quickened man, an heir, under law is all the same as a servant -- thinks, or at any rate feels, he has to make out his own righteousness -- has not the liberty wherewith Christ makes free. It is not a question of flesh working in us -- that it does, if it lust against the Spirit -- but if led of Him we are not under law. Hence it is said, Ye are not in the flesh if quickened, but, "If the Spirit of God dwell in you," and "If Christ be in you the body is dead." This can only be said by the death of Christ. Till then the conscience is under law, and our relationship to God depends, for the conscience, on our state, not on Christ's work, and our being dead, as to flesh, in Him. In verse 6 we have the deliverance from verse 5, and what is that? "We are delivered from the law, being dead," or having died, "in that in which we were held." The Law could not set me free. The experience of verses 14-24 is law, law, law, and I under it. It is not merely Israel, it is the effect of law as such, when we delight in it. It is then not merely the state of fallen nature subject to the Law, for it fancies it can do it. The struggle is when I delight in the Law of God in the inner man, but can never do good -- find no means to do it -- which is not Christian liberty. It is neither mere fallen nature, nor Christian liberty -- is said not to be. Captive, sold under sin, is the opposite of liberty. Delighting in God's law is not fallen nature. Killed and crucified with Christ, is being delivered from law. Believers under the old covenant were not endowed with this.
To be in the flesh is not to be in a state of sin, as Dr. F. explains it; he says: 'To be in the flesh is merely to be under the influence or power of human depravity.' He confounds the mind of the flesh, walking after the flesh, with our position
before God. It is total ignorance of the whole mind of God, and ignorance of the Apostle here. To be in the flesh is to be on Adam ground before God -- the flesh no doubt being evil -- in contrast with being in Christ, chapter 8: 1. The mind of the flesh is as bad in a saint as in an unbeliever -- worse, if there is any difference -- but he is not in the flesh. The Apostle states the difference: "Ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you." The 'men of faith under the old covenant' were not in this sense endowed with the Spirit -- the Comforter was not come, nor could He, till there was a Man in glory, even Christ the Lord, and He tells us so. A man could not be in Christ before -- there was no Christ to be in. The Prophets gave the promise of the Spirit, but that was not its coming; they studied their own prophecies, and found it was not for them but for us. The ancients saw the things afar off, and embraced them, and were saved by faith, but Prophets and Kings desired to see what the disciples saw, and did not see them. Yet it was even then desirable that the Lord went, and that they did not see Him, for, otherwise, the Comforter could not come, "For the Holy Ghost was not yet, because Jesus was not yet glorified." What the New Testament calls the Holy Ghost, i.e., as dwelling down here, was not yet come, and they which believed on Him (Christ) would receive. Christ (Acts 2) received the Holy Ghost anew when gone up on high thus to send Him. It was not His gifts for prophecy, and miracles were done before -- the Comforter was not come, and what alone gave union with Christ and made the believer cry Abba Father; Galatians 4. "In that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you."
All this part of his book is simple ignorance in Dr. Fairbairn of Christianity -- Christian deliverance. But to be in the flesh is not 'merely to be under the influence or power of human depravity.' We surely are when we are in it. But what the Apostle is teaching is that the Law could not deliver us from it, but the contrary -- that the motions of sin were by the Law. And being in the flesh is not 'the working of human depravity,' for this works when we are not in it but in the Spirit, and that it is when the Spirit dwells in us, not merely when it is actually working, but then we are not under the Law; Galatians 6. Hence, when he says, 'It is all one with being under the law,' he is right as to practice, but wrong as to its being the same as the depravity of the flesh, because that remains true of Christians
as to the flesh. And he has no idea of law as a principle which the Apostle is insisting on. It is not merely historical, but true of a renewed soul now, when under law.
The great object of Dr. Fairbairn is to show the Old Testament believers with a measure of grace under law, and the New Testament believers under law with a measure of grace, only larger -- the Apostle's, the absolute contrast of being under law, and having the Spirit as delivered. Romans 8:9 (by mistake, Galatians in the text) is not true of believers under law in Old or New. They are here free -- there (chapter 7) captive; here delivered -- there crying to be so. The person described by Paul is under the dominion of the flesh and sin, and the reason of the contrary is given in chapter 6, "Sin shall not have dominion over you; for ye are not under the law, but under grace." And here, without the Law sin was dead; when the Law came. sin revived and I died. He is not speaking historically -- he was born under it -- but of Christian knowledge (we know) of what law is. In the Old Testament there was no knowledge of the conflict of flesh and Spirit, nor of two natures. No doubt there was temptation and conflict, but no knowledge of two natures, nor of flesh and Spirit, i.e., "We know" -- a technical formula for Christian knowledge. And if verses 5 and 13 be the same, which they are in the main but not exactly, then Paul is, in verse 13, describing (as he clearly is) a state in which he is not, for he says (verse 5) "When we were," which you cannot say when you are. And nothing is simpler, for verse 5 refers to verse 4, where he speaks of having had an old husband and then came a new one. When we were under the first, such was our state. And when he says 'before they come under grace' -- do men 'always hate evil and will good' before they come under grace? The Law produces no 'flowers in the human heart' -- it is not the sun, it requires but has no heat, and never produced a colour or a flower. He says, 'The law is like the sun by whose light and heat roses and flowers display their fine colours, and emit their fragrant smell; whereas by its heat the dunghill emits its unsavoury steams and ill smell. So the law, which to a sanctified heart is a means of holy practice, doth, in those who are in the flesh, occasion the more vehement motions of sinful affections and lustings.' I ask if the Apostle here ever speaks of the Law as producing anything (not causing surely, but as effect of sin) but motions of sins and death, sin surely being the source not law, but sin by the Law producing evil
fruit and nothing else, all manner of concupiscence? Dr. F. tells us so, not the Spirit of God. We are delivered from it -- why so, if it produces flowers and fruit? It is all as false as it is ignorant.
He confounds quickening with receiving the Spirit. Whereas we never receive the Spirit till when we are quickened, and by faith sprinkled with the blood of Christ. It is a seal put upon a believer, not on an unbeliever, who is the person to be quickened. "Because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts"; and a multitude of passages, John 7, Ephesians 1, and others.
Page 434. He says: 'There is nothing here' (Romans 7:7), 'which does not more or less find a place in the history of every one who has come under the power of the quickening Spirit although some parts of the description belong more to the initiatory, others to the more advanced exercises of the believer, several again to those complex operations, those interminglings of the flesh and the Spirit, of which all believers are at times conscious.' Quickened of the Spirit, yes -- but there is not a word of the Spirit in the passage, nor interminglings of it, nor any thought of a soul which has deliverance, not one, nor ever does good. The last of all is a cry for deliverance, and a "Who shall deliver?" Then comes the answer. In Galatians we have not interminglings, but the flesh lusting against the Spirit, but there the man not under law which here he is.
Page 435. 'It is the principle of sin in his own bosom which was naturally at work there.' It is the principle of sin, not the acts.
Page 436. 'Verse 9. Such an experience, of course, belongs to the very threshold of Christian life.' Just so, but redemption and the Spirit unknown.
Page 439, verses 14-25. "We know" is Christian knowledge, as "We know that the Son of God is come" -- "We know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle," and others. "I am carnal" is personal -- the consciousness of what one is in flesh. And the whole is the statement by a man who is delivered (verse 25) of what the process is by which we come to deliverance, but the principles at work under the first husband -- the Law -- and what is the actual experience of no one, for no one has his will actually always right, and never able to do what is right, and that is what is described here. It is the working of the Law on a soul renewed but not delivered, i.e.,
under law, which will indeed recognise itself when described, but could never describe itself. It is from a delivered state, and by a delivered man that the description is given of the undelivered state. He can quietly describe it -- the undelivered man not, he dreads he is lost, i.e., the things pass in his soul, but the effect is different as to how he can look at it. A man out of a morass can describe how a man is in it -- in it, he thinks of perishing. Hence what Dr. F. says here is all false. It is not 'a settled believer' that is described as contrast in chapter 8. It is not 'a natural man' either, but a renewed soul, believing perhaps in the Person of Christ, but under law, not delivered. There is no proper conflict, but a man groaning under the folds of a chain which leaves him no liberty of action though he would be free, and may writhe under it. The proof that it is not the state of the Apostle is that he says, "When we were in the flesh," that he could do all things, that as a Christian he was not in the flesh -- not if he acted right, mind, but if the Spirit of Christ dwelt in him, if not he was none of His, i.e., it is not the working of flesh but a standing in Christ which makes the difference, the dwelling of the Spirit in us through redemption. Where He is there is liberty -- he is not captive to sin (sin is in him) but set free, and flesh condemned in the Cross of Christ. It is not that the statements are taken in an isolated manner -- there are none others beyond willing good and never able to perform it, till we come to "Thank God through Jesus Christ" on the cry (the true result) not "How shall I get the victory?" "How shall I make progress?" but "Who will deliver me?" I cannot get free from what I am captive in. The Red Sea was not progress but deliverance. The "We know" is not experience at all, but Christian knowledge.
Page 440. 'To wish sincerely what is spiritually good, and to hate what is of an opposite nature, plainly distinguish the regenerated man.' The will and hating do plainly distinguish the regenerate man, but they do not show deliverance but the contrary, and make the man cry out for it. They do not determine the place of the soul -- redemption, and the consequent possession of the Spirit does that. It is this there is entire ignorance of. He says: 'What the Apostle says on the other and lower side must be taken in a sense not incompatible with those higher characteristics -- must be understood in short of that other self, that old man of flesh or corruption, which was
still not utterly destroyed.' There is no need to say 'must be taken of that other self, the old man.' The Apostle says so, "I know that in me, that is in my flesh." But it was when he was in that flesh, which always remained in him, but he was not in Romans 8:9, where he had the Spirit. It is learning three things by divine teaching under law -- no good in me, i.e., in my flesh -- it is not I, but sin that dwells in me, for he is renewed -- but, thirdly, it is too strong for the I that wills good. Then having learned this humbling lesson, but most useful one, he is cast not on progress but on a Deliverer, and finds all is done. Then comes chapter 8: 1, 2, 3, with all its blessed results, and the Spirit which is not in chapter 7 at all.
He says: 'Similar confessions of the dominancy of indwelling sin, and lamentations over it, have often been heard in every age of the Church, from spiritually-minded persons; and are to be regarded as the indication, not of the absence of grace, but of that tenderness of conscience which is the characteristic of a properly enlightened and spiritual mind.' It is this doctrine which has ruined Christianity, and made some, on the other hand, pretend there was no sin any more in them.
Of the presence of indwelling sin -- all Christians, not deceived, are conscious -- if they are of its dominancy they are not under grace but under law. This is positive; chapters 6: 14; 8: 2.
Page 441. As to 'the relative preponderance of the two counter-forces in the Apostle's representation,' no doubt the I of will had not a relative preponderance. The will was always right, but power none -- he did not find at all the means of doing right. All this is mere confusion, and neglect of the statements of the passage, and sorry ignorance of the true Gospel, at any rate in its fulness. One I, the true one, was wholly in good, but he had found no deliverance from the other. Again his conclusion is all wrong. He says: 'Though writing under the clear light of the Gospel, Paul has no fault to find with the law as a revelation of duty, or a pattern of moral excellence.' He does not find fault with the Law. Of course not. It was God's law. As a revelation of duty it was perfect. As 'a pattern of moral excellence,' Christ is the only one -- a living Example, not a requirement on stone. But 'required duty' from man could not make God the pattern, and life from Him and the reception of the Holy Ghost does, as in Ephesians, and in the Sermon on the Mount. Christ was
God manifest in flesh, and that is our Model -- the Law, the child of Adam's rule with God.
Page 442. 'So far from there being any contrariety between the scope of the law's requirements and the spirit of the new life, the apostle rejoiced in the higher powers and privileges of this life, because through these the hope had come to him of gaining the victory.' Contrariety of course there is not, but this sentence shows Dr. F. is not out of Romans 7. It is in every way false. We do get the power of victory, but this is by the bye. We rejoice in God -- know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge -- rejoice in hope of the glory of God, and all the counsels of His grace for the glory of Christ. But the doctrine is just the opposite of that of the chapter. He found he could not gain the victory. Thinking to get rest by victory is bondage, because we cannot get free -- we are captive -- and, having learned this, we look for a deliverer, and we have this in Christ. And once brought to see that it is not progress, that we cannot get the victory, cannot deliver ourselves, the lesson is learned, and we find it is all done already in Christ, and then, and not till then do we get the victory. The natures remain the same. But instead of being captive and under the dominion of flesh, we are free, and the power of the Spirit is there to keep flesh as dead, because Christ has died, and we are not in it, and we alive in Him, sin having no more dominion, over us. We have flesh down instead of flesh having us down. We may fail, but we have liberty and power in Christ. The natures are not changed, but the state and condition are.
Romans gives none of the counsels of God as to the new man. It is responsibility, state, justification and deliverance. Is it not a singular thing that Dr. F., in speaking of what walk we are called to, only refers to Romans and Galatians, two Epistles where what is fundamental and essential is so fully given, to our infinite blessing, but where resurrection with Christ is never spoken of, and never to Colossians and Ephesians, where it is, and our heavenly place, and its bearing on our walk?
Page 444. I have not much to say here. He says, referring to Romans 10:5, 'It seems, at first sight, somewhat strange, that the Apostle should here refer to it in the way he does, or that he should represent the way of obtaining life as essentially different from, and in some sort antagonistic to, that under the Gospel.' He does, however, it seems. And no wonder! The gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ -- that is not law
at all. Indeed eternal life is never spoken of in the Old Testament but twice -- Psalm 133, and Daniel 12, and both times prophetically. One thing is sure -- law and faith speak differently as to righteousness; one was obtaining -- the other, a free gift. A law to give life was newer thought. It did not assume men to be dead, but responsible -- Christ does hold men to be dead in sin, and already lost.
Page 446. It is curious to see the incessant effort to undo what the Apostle is earnestly insisting on, only he cannot mean it from other passages. The Apostle asserts that if circumcised, they were debtors to the whole law -- James, that if offending in one point, they were guilty of all. They do insist on law. Dr. Fairbairn lets them down easy, and modifies the obligation by grace. But it is the principle which is in question. As many as are of the works of the Law are under the curse. And the ministry of death and condemnation was 'the law mixed with grace.'
Pages 457, 458. I have not much to say on Ephesians 2:2-17. The defects are more from understanding nothing, than opposition to the Apostle, as in Romans. He says: 'That this enmity has a certain respect to the hostile feeling and attitude subsisting between Jew and Gentile, seems clear from the reference going before to that antagonistic relationship and its abolition in Christ. The enmity, which Christ destroyed in His flesh, or which He slew through His cross, naturally carries our thoughts up to the great breach in man's condition, and the great work done by Christ to heal it. The Apostle plainly identifies the removing of this enmity with the reunion of sinners to God.' The enmity as produced by ordinances, or middle wall of partition, has nothing to do with healing the breach with God. The Cross did that, too, as to both, but that part of the passage has nothing to do with 'the common alienation which sin has produced between man and God.' So all the end of page 456 is false. The whole view is wrong. So when he says that, 'The apostle represents the system of law as done away, in order that humanity might be lifted out of its condemned and alienated condition, and might be formed into a kind of corporate body with Himself,' etc., it is all mischievously false, but arises from total ignorance of the Assembly or Church of God.
Page 460. Nobody says the contents of the Law are in themselves condemned or abolished. It is their condemnation,
or information by law, the law about them as Harless says, and this is absolute. Circumcision is done away, and all dependent on it, and if it be the contents of the Law by the Law's authority, only relatively done away, then all of it relatively remains, or else I am to choose some of it and leave the rest, and then where is its authority? for that is the question. And when he says 'the law is subjectively realised when we have access to God by Christ through the Spirit,' it betrays what the whole is worth. But this is not the point of Ephesians which gives Christian responsibility. That is from chapter 4: 17 as individuals.
Page 461. Here again we have the egregiously monstrous statement that law is the revelation of God's righteousness, and we have again 'uniting the divided human family into one new corporate body.' He says: 'The law's relation to men's responsibilities as the revelation of God's righteousness." And, 'That He might reconcile both of us in one body to God through the cross, this was the higher end of Christ's work on earth -- the lower, the uniting of the divided human family into one new corporate body.' The book is total ignorance of the doctrine and teaching of Ephesians and Colossians, a laborious argument against the Apostle's statements in Romans and Galatians.
More is not needed. But in page 466 we get an additional proof of the utter vagueness of his idea of the Christian condition, or of the idea of death (in sins) in Ephesians and Colossians. "Having forgiven us" is 'forgiveness secured as a boon ready to be bestowed on every one,' and this 'potentially' as he calls it elsewhere, 'the essential groundwork and condition of this quickening.' He has not an idea of the Christian condition, and not only takes Christianity on its lowest ground but carefully reduces the higher to this. The basis, as I have said, he resists.
All the statement that a seventh part of our time should be devoted to God, as if this was the command, is futile, I am sure it was the fitting time since God ordained it. But the point of the commandment was rest, and God's rest, though made for man, making Christ Lord of it, but religiously it is God's rest, and to make it a shadow (skia) of the Lord's day is to make it a shadow of what is not the substance. Justin Martyr says: How can we rest one day in the week, when we rest from sin every day? This Dr. Fairbairn partially sees, but if it was
'abolished in Christ, as a mere shadow,' who authorised its change to the first day of the week? And what comes of the authority of the Law, if it is abolished, and what it ordains is changed by nobody knows who? I have no doubt that the Sabbath is the shadow of the earthly millennial rest -- the Lord's day, of the heavenly by resurrection -- but then it is not by law, because as such it is 'abolished in Christ.' Well! He did take away the first, but then why plead its authority? The first day of the week is not law, but New Testament practice on the model of the Lord's own actings after His resurrection, and called the Lord's day. He says: 'In so far as the Sabbath was a shadow of anything in Christian times, it was abolished in Christ; and the day which took its place from the beginning of the Gospel dispensation, and had become known and observed as the Lord's day, was changed from the last to the first day of the week.'
Page 477. He says: 'The proper use of the law is a plain, direct, and peremptory repression of corruption and vicious practices' -- only it does not repress them. It is then good when applied to the great moral ends for which it was given. But this was to 'repress vicious practices'; but this is its only use! How can it be 'a perfect rule of life'? There is just one condition, a single guiding principle -- it is not made for a righteous man, i.e., for a Christian (nomos ou keitai). Law is not made (keitai -- a technical word for those subjected to it) -- English law has its application (keitai) for Englishmen, not for others, cannot be applied to them -- and law (for it is law), but take it as exemplified in the Decalogue, but the only true translation is "law does not apply to," is not enacted for the righteous, cannot therefore direct God's people, it is 'to repress vice or anything contrary to sound doctrine.' This is explained by a ridiculous sentence, that 'it does not apply to the sanctified who have attained the end of the law.' Then they must be perfect, or the Law not, for if it be perfect it would apply till they were. That is, "The Law was not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient," etc., means it does not apply to the perfect because they do not want any law at all, as being perfect. This is satisfactory exposition! Then it is not only to repress and convict, but to bring to a better state. In page 479, he adds 'convict of sin,' which is its only true use at all.
We may see the low ground on which the system is by
returning for a moment to page 338. He says: 'Scripture is a book for the sanctification of humanity,' and, page 340, 'The scheme reached its consummation in the appearance and kingdom of Christ.' It is curious how redemption, and the new and heavenly things in Christ practically drop out in the writer's scheme.
I add, it is of all importance to distinguish between the contents of a law and the imposition of them by law. But besides a law, as such, of real responsibility cannot go beyond the obligation and moral measure of the person on whom it is imposed as to his nature (not his state and disposition). If a law commanded things which it required the capacity of an archangel to do, they are no test of moral subjection. I do not mean that sinful flesh is de facto subject to the Law, but it must be adapted to man as man, to make it a measure of duty. Duty I may be, through my state, incapable of fulfilling, but the measure of duty as such. Hence legal duty can never be the measure of the display of God.
The Apostle's reasonings are almost always -- always save on special dispensational questions -- on law having nothing to do with continuance or discontinuance of Sinaitic commands, but of the operation of law as law, and what it becomes to man in sin. The dependence of morality on relationships, i.e., its being the fulfilling of the obligations the relation puts me under, is not considered by the author. He has no idea of a duty till it be imposed -- whereas it is never imposed till man is in a state to need it, and consequently cannot perform it. Why command love if love flowed forth spontaneously, and whoever loved by command?
But then the divine Law takes up these relations, and enforces these obligations, and in that sense is in no way arbitrary, not even the Sabbath entirely, because it pointed out a special relationship never yet fully entered into -- our entering into God's rest. This became a law, but it was not a law when instituted. The only law which was not founded on the maintaining any existing relationship, was arbitrary, and so simply tested obedience. Hence the contents of the Law existed before law -- law recognises them -- but law introduces authority external to the relation, imposing the obligation so as to enforce it, not as a relationship which carries it with itself, but as obedience -- introduces quite a new element. The relationship, evil being entered, does not maintain itself naturally,
but is maintained by authority, supposing the need of such, and a will that has to be controlled as wanting, or likely to be wanting, to the relation which involved the obligation.
Note, not only the Law gives no life, but it reveals no object. As creatures it suffices not that we have a nature capable of certain affections, we must have an object suited to and which ever forms them. God alone can create, but has no need of objects. Now the Law gives neither. It says: Thou shalt love God, but who, what is He, save the terror of judgment if disobeyed? A rule, and the consequences of breaking it -- that is all. But it gives no nature to enjoy what is blessed, nor any blessed object to be enjoyed, and to form it. Christ is both -- revealing God as the only-begotten Son in the bosom of the Father.
It is a great mistake to apply the Sermon on the Mount in its positive statements to the law of the Ten Commandments, as if it was a spiritualising of them. The Law, as a system, is spoken of, taken up in Matthew 5:17, 18, along with the Prophets. Prophecies, ceremonies, and all that is in the Law, were not set aside, or annulled, but fulfilled, the body was of Christ, and no doubt the Lord fulfilled its behests and precepts. It was to be kept till all was fulfilled. For faith, it was fulfilled in Christ, and, as to practical righteousness, is fulfilled in the Christian; Romans 8. But what the Lord goes then through is the contrast of an internal state of heart with Pharisaic outward formal righteousness. Only two of the commandments are mentioned as of the old times, and a subjective state is contrasted with a mere formal fulfilment of the letter. Duties to God are not entered on (never, I think, in Matthew, for God was revealing Himself in a new way). Man was not to think merely of killing -- if one hated his brother, was angry even without a cause, God took notice of it; so of adultery. You have thus the state of the heart judged. So, as to alms, and all else, it is a righteousness which exceeds the righteousness of Scribes and Pharisees, as in verse 20. But in no wise a spiritualising of the Law. As I have said myself, eight out of ten commandments are not referred to. Verse 20 is the key to it; compare chapter 6: 2, 16. There, of course, you get positive directions.
Chapter 5: 1-16 is the whole character, and state, and position of the disciples as entering into the kingdom; verses 17-20, relationship to foregoing dispensation and revelation -- not destroy but fulfil. But then, as instructing them, taking it up on the side of man's responsibility (verses 19, 20) the difficult point is "these." It is to be remembered that all this was before redemption, and no mention of it in the Sermon. It is the character of the enterers. The rock is obedience. Now this would make it obedience to the Law, but seen as they all were by the Lawgiver who was there, by Christ Himself, who did look to the end of those things which were to be abolished -- the spiritual estimate of them by Christ Himself. The one who then in Israel, while the Law was in force, enfeebled any,
the least, was the least in the Kingdom. Disobedience, and taught disobedience to the schoolmaster, was not obedience to the Father, nor the way to coming blessing, nor would Pharisee righteousness do. Then (verse 21) He gives not a spiritualising of the Law, but the two great principles of sin at all times -- violence and corrupt lust.
Verses 25, 26, are Israel's then condition; the reducing it to practice ever (verses 23, 24). To the second is added the question of divorce, not now to be allowed save in one case. Then the principle of human competency is judged, and mere human righteousness of the law of Talion. Grace takes its place as supreme, above law, in connection with relationship to the Father. The Law and Prophets were fully owned as of Jehovah to be fulfilled, but man's will and power negatived, and grace and the Father in sovereign goodness introduced. This was the Son's place perfectly, and exactly, upon earth. Not that He had not power, but did nothing of Himself -- was not making vows. In the first two, the two great principles of evil in man relatively, we have instead of unbroken violence of will, the lowly seeking of forgiveness, to be reconciled in the acknowledgment of fault seeking peace, and this applied to the Jews' then state, Christ being there, their present state the consequence then spoken of. In connection with the other principle, the most thorough self-judgment, plucking out a right eye, cutting off a right hand, at all cost maintaining purity and holiness. This judgment of self to maintain holiness of heart as against sin, as the other, grace in holiness. Then relationship with God and the Father. As regards God, not voluntary promising to Him, as a Jew would, but the just sense of His greatness, and our incapacity to do anything, restraining us; and then grace, not resisting evil in contrast with legal maintaining our rights, to the full measure of the Father now revealed -- a total change of dispensation, not the Holy Ghost revealing a glorified Christ, and, sent of the Father, the Spirit of adoption, but the Father fully revealed in the Son in grace. Thus, besides the blessed moral instruction, the fullest dispensational teaching in the revelation of the Father in grace in the Son. But it is wholly Christ on earth, "I have declared unto them thy name."
Verse 25. The Jews were with Jehovah (with Messiah) in the way, the precept being given morally. Here the Father is fully revealed as to His character in love in Christ. Man's
ways before God, and the revelation of the Father before men, both in Christ.
Thus far subjective. But now the Father's name has been introduced, and is the basis up to the end of chapter 7: 12. It is the positive activity of divine life -- doing righteousnesses, alms, prayer, fasting, all to be with, as if true from, the Father. The incense was all burned to God, however the sweet savour might go forth. They were to trust Him as a Father, and not to be laying up, or having anxiety. Here the Father's name connects itself with what is subjective, still as the consequence of a true and right object. This is chapter 6: 19-34. Note too, though it be the revelation of the Father in the Son on earth, the Father is in heaven though they are on earth, and so viewed, but this sets their treasure in heaven, their motive wholly there, and it is wholly this -- God or mammon; compare chapter 5: 12. When they are the light of the world, the Father's name comes in -- it is grace -- verses 14-16. Verse 13, it is responsibility and so dealt with. (Note, this is the present difficulty, to unite both, to maintain being the salt of the earth and be light to it in love, to abide as Joshua in the tabernacle, and go with Moses into the camp, though having pitched the tabernacle very far off from it -- but that is what we have to do.) Compare the difference of verses 10 and 11, 12 and 9, from what goes before. Hence also in chapter 6, we have reward.
Chapter 7 gives, as before, subject responsibility and self-judgment, in contrast with man's pretention to judge others, though these were profane and reckless men, to whom the rich blessings of grace and truth should not be presented, but all this is not redemption. Then grace in the Father which closes the instruction. The rest is composed of warnings not to deceive one's self or be deceived, and obedience is laid as the foundation, and true wisdom. It remains a strait gate and a narrow way. In sum, the discourse belonged to that time (whatever instruction there be for us) is what Christ was as the Man according to God's heart, and Son of the Father, and they were called so to walk. It does not treat of redemption, nor love to sinners, but of responsibility as then specially developed, and the Father's name and grace -- they being on the earth. Do to others, grace doing, what one would wish one's self, reciprocal care loving one's neighbour as one's self. This is the Law and the Prophets. Is not this what they amount to? But the Law is "this" -- such is its true character;
and the Prophets, not touto (this) but houtos ho logos (this is the word). God is in heaven, but the reward there, if we suffer for Him who came thence, and is there, but Man on the earth.
So the prayer. It is Christ's ministry, the manifestation of His mind on earth, and connected with the true Remnant, but with the Father.
The divisions in the Sermon come out more clear to me. It is clearly the characters suited to the Kingdom, and the circumstances and heart-duties of those who are awaiting its establishment in power. Chapter 5: 1-16, the character of those to whom the Kingdom belongs, and who belong to it, even reward in heaven if persecuted. It is a change of dispensation, as far as realised, havo ([the age] to come), and not hazeh (this [age]). Verses 17-37, the connection, and mutual bearing of the new and old, with the spirit engendered by the Law, and the Law itself; but going on to take up the great principles of sin in nature, violence and corruption, and God's power, and our nothingness in connection with it, and so subduedness. Verses 38-48, good in the midst of evil, and that doubly -- Christ's life on earth, not resisting evil, and grace, the manifestation of God in Him on earth. This closes one section.
Chapter 6: 1-34, purity of motive, not to be seen of men -- as to alms, prayer, fasting, all to be done to God. This world's good, moreover, not to be a motive at all, nor a matter of care -- cannot serve two masters -- and we are to trust God, and first to seek the Kingdom of God. Subdivided, verses 1-18, 19-34.
Chapter 7, general characteristics, directions, and warnings. Then, note, the name of the Father comes in, when good in grace, as it was in Jesus, comes in; chapter 5: 45. Previous to verse 37, it was, after the first characteristics, contrast with the old system with the Jews; those, also, consequently, who touched the commandments in that state of things, would be small in the Kingdom. This was the moral, not the grace side. The Law and the Prophets were of Jehovah, and were fully owned, and now, as far as they referred to it, to be fulfilled. This Jewish aspect brings in verse 25. They were passing from their dispensation to another, as indeed they expected. But from chapter 5: 43, 45, all is connected with the Father. Verse 38, as said, begins Christ on earth.
I find more than I remembered in 1874. Chapter 5: 1-16 is their character and place, and therefore the Father is brought
in at the end. Verses 17-37, contrast or principles in reference to "of old." Verses 38-48, are really Christ in His double character -- as Man on earth, and revealing the Father. Hence verse 43 brings in full grace. Then the Father properly begins, or grace, and all from that is relationship with Him, and reference to Him now revealed in Christ. Religious duties, dikaiosune (righteousness). Chapter 7 is general, not special relationships, but truth and discernment in conduct, still in relationship with the Father.
The character of the end of chapter 5 is deeply important. After insisting on the subjective state and spirit suited to the kingdom, the putting down of will and unsubdued self, He takes up the principle of the Law, dealing with evil for its repression by the law of Talion, and then introduces the immense principle, known by Christ's coming into the midst of evil -- good entirely above evil, but acting in the midst of it -- takes notice of it, and as exercised against one's self, but above it, and acting from its own motives, and this is what God does, and here is made known to those born of Him, those connected with Christ. "As their Father," a totally new principle, they are to be like Him -- this was the perfect path of Christ -- a wonderful privilege, showing what, in this connection, "perfect" means. It is not reached by the evil, save to draw out the good, and make a new created but divine path in this world. It is not righteousness, in the sense of justice, not what presents us to God, but that wherein we are to be perfect like Him. What a place to put us in! But it is not holiness (though largely ministering to it; see 1 Thessalonians 4) not intrinsic purity though supposing it and inseparable from it, but as above evil and self, goodness, for such is God even our Father, evil would make it impossible -- it is goodness in the midst of evil. Goodness in the midst of good is heaven (but, in its highest character, result of redemption, for good and evil are now known -- in the Cross, absolutely and perfectly brought to an issue) but in itself, as result. Goodness in the midst of good, all answering to itself, and adoringly capable of enjoying it. This is. grace. Good above evil.
It is as clear as language can make it that verses 17 and 18 have nothing to do, good or bad, with our fulfilling the Law in our walk. Whatever "fulfil" means for the Prophets, it means for the Law. Verse 18 connects it more strongly with that sense than the structure even of the preceding verse.
The previous dispensation and revelations of God, He came not to set aside as testimony but to fulfil. They were God's testimony, not for a permanency, but not as such to be made void. The righteousness of God is revealed wholly apart from law, but was witnessed by law and prophets. Whatever the Law and the Prophets put forth as that which God would have, that Christ met in all that concerned Him, for all is not fulfilled yet. Nor will one atom of God's testimony pass away as void in either -- all will be made good. Am I to fulfil the Prophets? Yet what is here said of fulfilling, is said of law as of prophets. Whatever is fulfilled it is, here, by what Christ came to do. The righteousness of the Law is fulfilled in us, because we are not under it, by those who walk after the Spirit.
Although taking up the Remnant as such, yet I think the Sermon on the Mount, and the tenth chapter must be taken as especially applying to the kingdom as then proposed, and the disciples as then called -- a period which practically ended with the destruction of Jerusalem. It may be resumed in a modified way at the end, and doubtless will, but they could hardly pray then, "Lead us not into temptation," for they are in it, and they have been delivered to the Judge. Jehovah will be hardly in the way with them as He was now. Doubtless it will be applicable to them in principle (as to us), but the direct application is to the Remnant then. Only there was suspension, by the Son of Man's not coming then, of the whole thing, the Church coming in then meanwhile.
There is a closing in chapter 9, as well as in chapter 12. And note in chapter 10, the Spirit is spoken of, as in the disciples. But the mission divides in a measure between chapter 10: 15, 16. Chapter 11 and 12 give a much more definite rejection, with its declared consequences as against Israel, and bringing in a new state of things, as the Father and the Son, the Son of man Lord of the Sabbath, and the unclean spirit entering into the generation with seven more, and the like. Up to the end of chapter 10, we get His then presence in grace, and even the mission in grace after He was gone, and passes this last over. Even the same blasphemy of the Pharisees is followed by calling for the prayer for labourers. He raises the dead Israel (Jairus' daughter) as well as on the way heals whoever had faith to touch Him. And, though the effect is intimated in result as the children of the Kingdom being cast out, and the swine rushing headlong into the sea, yet the direct
dealings, the subjects of the teaching are grace -- the blessing the Gentile who had more faith than Israel, and healing Legion.
Chapters 11 and 12, the axe is at the root of the tree. There had been the mourning and the piping. In chapter 10, grace continues to Israel. In chapter 11, the Person of the Son in grace takes the place of His service there, to whomsoever He may reveal the Father, and in chapter 12, final judgment is on Israel because a greater than Jonah and Solomon was there unheeded. He knows only His disciples through the Word, not His relations in the flesh with Israel. This development of Matthew is very striking. After the Sermon on the Mount, in which what suited the Kingdom and those who would enter into it is stated, and the Father's name manifested to the disciples, we have in chapter 8, Jehovah cleansing but touching the leper. A wonderful testimony -- nothing in circumstance like it -- and the Gentiles received while the children of the kingdom would be shut out. Still the subject, as noticed, is grace (only for faith). Then Jehovah bearing, as Man, our sicknesses and infirmities, but the Son of man not where to lay His head. Obligation to leave all, even the dead to bury their dead, then storms, but Christ tranquil (asleep to man's eyes) but the disciples in the same boat with Him, and then casting aside Satan's whole power by a word, but the ruin of the possessed swine (Israel) and the easy world getting rid of Him. The whole picture of His presence in grace.
Chapter 9, we have the character of His mission. Again He is the Jehovah of Psalm 103 -- forgives and heals what Israel (as we all) wanted, but new wine cannot be put into old bottles. All is grace, but Israel rejects, cannot as such receive, but it is grace. He is come to call sinners. We have then the coming to raise really Israel, and those who had faith healed on the way. Still He has compassion on Israel as sheep without a shepherd, and sends labourers into the harvest, of which I have spoken. My object now is to note the character of grace in all these dealings, though it may with unbelief bring with it judgment.
In chapter 11, He is Jehovah, there testing John Baptist himself by the adequate evidence He gives of Himself. It is now counsels and judgment -- the Law and the Prophets were till John -- the Kingdom was going to be set up, and pressing into it with the suffering violence of faith was the path. If they could receive it, it was Elias, but the die was cast -- John
had mourned but they had not lamented -- He had piped and they had not danced. He reproaches the cities because they did not repent, and the Father, as we have said, is revealed by the Son in whom rest and the easy yoke of submissive obedience is found. Then the sign of the covenant dealt with -- He is Lord of the Sabbath -- He continued in patient grace, but would not be known till He sent forth judgment to the Gentiles. Blasphemy against the Holy Ghost comes in, and then the full judgment of the generation. In chapter 11, then we have the judgment, and the deaf ears of the generation, and the Father and the Son brought in to replace present ministry. In chapter 12, He is paramount to the old covenant as Son of man, and, on the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, the generation is given up to final judgment of the seven spirits worse than idolatry, only those who receive the Word are owned. He is now the Divine Word, not Messiah in Israel, nor Jehovah seeking fruit from His vine. Even here note the Father and the Son, as such, bring in pure grace (Israel being set aside as in John) the Word, responsibility in itself and when the Kingdom is set up. So that judgment applies to it at the end as it did to Israel.
The Kingdom of God was present in the Person and power of Christ on the earth. The Kingdom of heaven is presented prospectively (at hand). The establishing heavenly rule with a heavenly character in those that were its children, poor in spirit, converted, becoming as little children, persecuted for righteousness' sake. By the rejection of Christ, the Kingdom became like (homoiothe) such and such, and not only the enemy sowed tares, but the fisherman's net gathered of every kind. But the good seed were the children of the Kingdom, and the object of the net was the good fishes. Next, the Kingdom of the Son of man is when Christ comes and establishes His power on earth. The Father's Kingdom is the heavenly part which is the source of all. So the Lord's prayer, so the explanation of the parable of the tares, introducing both these last -- when Christ will drink the wine, be their companion for joy in a new way. Now, as far as Christ was concerned, it was only good seed, and no one entered into the Kingdom by Him but the converted -- those whose righteousness exceeded that of Scribes and Pharisees. But in Israel Christ was gathering the wheat into His garner, His fan was in His hand. This testimony of the Kingdom of heaven at hand was to Israel, not to Gentiles,
as in Matthew 10. They were not to go to them. The Sower, when Israel was judged, and the other parables in chapter 13, go out beyond this.
Then as to the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven; it is as thus presented as coming in, not reward in heaven -- that in Matthew 5, is a distinct thing -- but the least in the Kingdom (the then prospective Kingdom) was greater in the blessings he enjoyed, His place, than John the baptist.
The Sermon on the Mount is very interesting in connection with Matthew 10 and 24. First Matthew 10 and 24, when they speak of being hated for Christ's sake, do not speak of the final conflicts of the last three years and a half, but of that general mission which could be carried on even when Christ was there, and yet extended beyond it and continued when He was gone. In chapter 10 it applies to Israel alone, the lost sheep of the House of Israel. They were not to go to Gentiles or Samaritans. They were on the ground of the Matthew testimony -- the Father's name revealed to them, sent forth from Jesus announcing the Kingdom of heaven's being at hand. Only when brought before kings and rulers of the Gentiles, there is the additional fact of the Spirit of their Father helping them, and the ministry is carried on in the presence of a hostile people. They are Maschilim (the instructed). It is not redemption, or what we call the Gospel, but the proximity of the Kingdom -- not Christ's personal ministry, nor is the Holy Ghost presented as the Comforter sent down, though when sent down, He might act in this way. The disciples are placed in the revelation of the Father's name as Christ revealed it when on earth, and their Father's Spirit speaks in them. It is the kind of testimony, or position of rendering it, which is consequent on Psalms 1 and 2. They have to endure to the end. They will not have accomplished their service till the Son of man be come -- that brings us to Psalm 8. It is not laid upon the basis of a Son of man suffering, though most of the testimony went on after the fact, and led to all their trials, but they are a Remnant suffering from a hostile and wicked nation, and from perverse and rebellious Gentiles. They are in view of a coming Son of man whom God has made strong for Himself. As to the spirit of the nation -- "Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven." They are for the lost sheep of the House of Israel. Jerusalem is not definitely part of the scene.
In chapter 24, Jerusalem is definitely the centre of the subject. Her house left desolate, and not to see Christ again until she say: Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord. We have not the Son of man here, but the Stone which the builders refused become the Head of the corner. Hence the disciples suffer, from the outset there are false Christs. It is not a testimony, though it may be supposed, but they suffer for Christ's name's sake. And the Gospel of the Kingdom is preached in all the world for a witness to all nations, and then the end of the age comes. Then there is a specific time of three and a half years referred to in Daniel, during which Jerusalem is under special oppression through the abomination set up. Those that are in Judaea are to flee to the mountains. It closes with the coming of the Son of man. All Judaea is the subject of warning, but the occasion is the abomination of desolation in Jerusalem. To verse 14 it went on to the end. What follows is special, but the tribulation is not confined to Jerusalem, but it is intimated that its focus is in Judaea. The fact of the preaching in all nations is merely a sign of the end.
In Matthew 5-7, we have just these elements as to the character of the Remnant. It is, as often remarked, the character belonging to the Kingdom. But then we have suffering for Christ's sake, and going to heaven as the martyred Remnant will. The Father's name is revealed -- redemption in no way taught. The condition of Israel briefly but clearly told us in verses 25, 26. The Law and the Prophets not destroyed. They are salt in the land and light in the world. But here, as in chapter 10, the last trial is not found. It is a matter apart, even in chapter 24. The Lord's prayer is perfectly suited to that time. It goes on to that day; chap 7: 22, 23. Even false prophets are warned against, but they are discerned morally, just as the judgment in that day is on the same ground. Hence we have not the Son of man, because the subject is what is morally fit for the Kingdom, and to be applied then that He might not be rejected. He was propounding, as a present thing, the doctrine as to the principle of the Kingdom, only He brings in their consequences. While stating the change both as to Church and Kingdom (the Church by a special revelation, not what Christ was openly teaching) it is remarkable how Matthew keeps on Jewish ground; so there is no taking up to heaven at all.
Jehovah their Messiah was there as Prophet. It would go
out to Gentiles (chapter 8: 11), who would be in the Kingdom of heaven. The Son of man had not where to lay His head. Christ is in the troubles with His disciples, but it passes on to His rejection as then (and from chapter 13, sowing, not looking for fruit), the definite rejection, yet of Him who satisfied the poor with bread in Israel. The nation judged in its rulers. But God, from His nature, blesses necessarily beyond, where so looked to, and the Remnant according to His own perfectness if not administrative fulness naturally. Then chapter 16, the nation is judged practically, and the Church brought in.
We see the Spirit's work in Creation, in the Samsons, Jephthas, Sauls, and even Balaam -- then in the Prophets, calling back to the Law, and foretelling Messiah, suffering, and the glories to follow. But here though called the Spirit of Christ, yet it was a
divine Person working in a divine way to manifest power, or deal with God's people from without. This went on till John. He was Messiah's forerunner -- it was a transition time. Then on Christ, as Man, the Holy Spirit came down as a dove. He was anointed and sealed, but He only -- on this to be declared Son of God by John. And then the heavens opened, He anointed, and the Father owning Him as His Son, the Man that was there, the Second Man and last Adam, personally though yet alone. For, except the Corn of Wheat fall into the ground and die, it must abide alone. Even then Christ was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to overcome for us, fully tested here below. Through the eternal Spirit He offered Himself without spot to God. But He was alone. But then, what no heart can tell or fathom, the blessed Son of God, the lowly One, and the Just, was made sin for us, and we can say: He hath borne our sins in His own body on the tree. Now He is risen -- all that is passed -- that wonderful atonement has been made, in the very place of our sin in absolute and perfect obedience and love to the Father -- God perfectly glorified. Sin, death, Satan's power, God's forsaking, and judgment against sin, all passed, and Man owned of God as to His work, and having glorified God as made sin, is passed into the divine glory to begin all afresh in a place, the consequence of redemption, and thence, having in that place received the Holy Ghost, has sent it down to believers -- not to man in the flesh, or the world (though the Gospel goes out to them by it) -- to associate them with and unite them to Him who, glorified, begins all afresh.
1 Timothy 1:5. How very perfect this statement as to the result! In what an atmosphere of blessing it puts us, in contrast with the idle speculations of man's mind! The object of the commission is not idle speculation, but love (God's own nature) enjoyed and active, purity in the affections, a pure heart which sees God -- the conscience, with nothing on it, happy in God's presence; and then faith, the spirit of dependence on, and confidence in God. How bright a state in God's presence!
The three points of our present walk are very clearly brought out in 2 Timothy 2, in the well-known passage -- withdrawal from iniquity, as naming the name of Christ -- purifying ourselves from the vessels -- association with those (in the path of grace, righteousness, and peace) who call on the Lord out of a pure heart (whom I am thus called to own, as far as manifested, though owning the Lord only knows them that are His). I add then, courage and the Scriptures; and we have the special provision for the last days. The armour of God is for all times -- the sense of dependence our security.
The comparison of John 1 and 1 John 1; chapter 2: 1, 2, is full of interest. In John 1, the life is the light of men, but darkness comprehends it not. In 1 John 1, they have seen, looked upon, and handled the Word of life, and show the Eternal Life which was with the Father, and manifested to them; through the Word made flesh become a Word of life to them, they have fellowship with the Father and the Son -- the names of grace. Then instead of the light shining in darkness, and the darkness not comprehending it, they are in the light as God is in the light, where responsibility and test comes in. I only touch on the main elements to suggest the ground of what was in my mind -- the complete contrast of the Christian's place by redemption, and the world's on the presenting of Christ and His being merely in it. And I add, in chapter 2: 1, 2, provision is made for failure in detail. Jesus Christ the righteous, and the propitiation remain in full force -- we
are in the light as God is, as to place and title. But darkness in act has necessarily totally destroyed communion, though righteousness remain, and hence He is not an Advocate with God, to restore righteousness, but with the Father, on the footing of righteousness and propitiation restoring communion. Failure is judged according to the light we are in -- as God is in it. And hence on the footing of what He accepts as putting away sin, I speak as I am, an ever present now, according to that light. The full enjoyment of the out-flowing of grace in communion is re-established. The whole comparison is full of interest.
I think it is remarkable how Paul contemplates the introduction of false brethren from the beginning and distinguishes the sacramental system as distinct from salvation, and man's work contrasted with God's -- while Peter does not, save as the fruit of positively false teachers like the false prophets of old; but as an ordinary fruit to be produced, he does not. The Christian work is Christ's work, is of God. He addresses the saints, not merely as positionally and rightly such, but as individually such; nor is any other work recorded or supposed. We may suppose such must have been, and such may have been the case in Lydda, but it is not supposed; they turned to the Lord. Simon Magus he detected, which confirms this. Paul's object, of course, was the same, but, like the fisherman's net, it gathered, and he contemplates its gathering of every kind. He contemplates wood, hay and stubble -- branches being cut off -- sacramental introduction and privilege -- but with many God being not well-pleased. This is remarkable. It is a vast system inaugurated on the earth, which Paul commences -- Peter's is a falling one there, but in its nature simply divine operation. I have already considered Matthew 16 in connection with this.
The two 'becames' in Hebrews 2:10 and chapter 7: 26, are striking, as showing the deep truth of God's dealings in respect of Christ, and the wondrous height of our heavenly calling. -- "It became him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings." The majesty of
God was such that it became Him, if that Blessed One took up our cause, to make Him pass through the suffering to enter into glory. We can say that it became God, our sins being such, not to pass over them, or our state before Him, and Christ must suffer. Then when our calling comes, a High Priest becomes us who is separate from sinners, made higher than the heavens, for that is our place as called. Another kind of high priest, or place of exercise of his priesthood would not do, for that is our place and condition, called withal to the holy and harmless.
The first disciples saw and believed, but then fuller light came in. Between that fuller light and Thomas's confession, which represents Israel in the latter day, the difference is evident. In the message by Mary Magdalene, where it was faith by hearing, the testimony is of the Son of God going on high as Man, and placing His disciples in the very same position as Himself: "I ascend to my Father, and your Father, and to my God, and your God." Thomas's confession of Christ is a remarkable one, owning Christ as his Lord and his God; but he looks up to Him in the divinity and glory of His Person. He is not associated with Him in His own blessed position in relationship with the Father, and the place He has taken as Man before God. This latter is Christ's own communication in grace to the disciples, as giving them part with Himself -- Thomas's, his recognition of His glory when it is forced upon him. And this is all in its place.
Note, Paul alone puts baptism, as far as I am aware, on the ground of death and resurrection with Christ. Thus it becomes the means of doctrinally bringing the Christian on to the point where, on the new ground and in a new position, he is united to Christ as Head. In Romans, he only carries it out to the individual position, but in Colossians he uses it not as union, of course, but as that which, by taking out of flesh into what is beyond it, is the inseparable introduction into holding the Head. It is only life, but life hid with Christ in God. But he introduces 'holding the Head' as the necessary and inseparable consequence, only the Holy Ghost is not brought in in
this Epistle. The connection is in chapter 1: 18, not the same, but connected, so immediately in Christ. Hence it glimmers though not unfolded, as in chapter 1: 24, 25, and chapter 2: 19.
Note in 1 John 5:18, 19, we have the opposition of the new nature to the whole trinity of evil; whosoever is born of God sinneth not -- the will and nature of flesh; he that is born of God keepeth himself, and that wicked one toucheth him not; and, we know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness.
Note the remarkable contrast between John 1:5, "The light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not," and 1 John 2:8, "The darkness is past, and the true light now shineth." We get the full character of the living Christ in the presence of men brought in by redemption after the Lord's death. In life He was the Light of men, but men were darkness, opposite in nature, and the Light did not dispel the darkness at all. It remained, as before, darkness, and did not comprehend the Light. But redemption came in -- there was a new state of things -- Christ had overcome the power of darkness, and brought a new condition of men in resurrection into existence, and vivified according to the power and place of this life, which was in the light as God was in the light, and had left the darkness and the whole scene and power of it where it was, behind, the other side of the Cross. Thus those who had received Him, had received light in life in their souls -- cleansed by the blood, they walked in the light, and were light. It was not the strange phenomenon of light shining and darkness remaining, but the darkness was passing and already the light shone as light, not in darkness merely. This is an immense change indeed. It is then easy to see how it connects itself with "Which thing is true in him and in you." It shows the relative place of the Gospel and Epistle very clearly, and more, it shows very powerfully the difference between Christ's position and witness on earth, and the light brought in after redemption was wrought, and He was risen. It is a very important comparison.
Note how carefully the Kingdom and our portion in Christ are everywhere distinguished when brought together, and both introduced so as to mark the distinction. First, in 2 Peter 1, the transfiguration is the plain manifestation of the glory of the Kingdom, indeed is so said to be in the Gospels, where it is visible and Christ appears with His saints. This is connected with prophecy. It confirms what the Prophets had said as to what the history of this world would end in -- was a light in this dark world -- but this is contrasted with another thing, the daydawn, and the Daystar arising in the heart. Next, in Revelation 2, we have the promise of Kingdom of Psalm 2 extended to the saints. Here in the full corruption of the Church (popery) the faithful are urged to hold fast, and the end looked at, "Till I come"; then the Kingdom of the rod of iron over the nations given (that is prophecy) but, besides that, the Morning Star, Christ, before the day comes. Then in Revelation 22, as at the beginning, the efficacy of Christ's forbearing known in the heart relationship of the saints, so when all the prophecy had been gone through, Jesus presents Himself as the Root and Offspring of David, the bright and morning Star. As the former He is the Source and Heir of promises, as the Morning Star the Hope of the Church. The Spirit who is down here animating the Church, and the Bride in the sense of her own relationship, looks for Himself to come, and the whole position of the Church meanwhile, as having the Spirit, is unfolded. And so we find it elsewhere. At the end of 1 Thessalonians 4, where it had been declared that those that slept in Jesus, God would bring with Him -- this is the manifestation in glory also, which is continued in connection with the day, in chapter 5; our going up to Him, so as to be with Him for ever, which answers to the Morning Star, is unfolded in the intervening parenthesis.
First, the word psuche is clearly used for "life," as Matthew 2:20; chapter 10: 39; Mark 3:4; Luke 9:24, 56; John 12:25, and many other passages. Next, it is used for the general fact of conscious feeling and existence -- the activity of the inner man -- without defining whence or what it is. In this way, it is used even of God; Matthew 12:18; Hebrews 10:38. Thus: "With all thy heart, and with all thy soul"; "My soul is exceeding sorrowful"; "A sword shall pierce through thy own soul;" Matthew 22:37; Mark 14:34; Luke 2:35. It is used for persons, as Acts 2:41, 43; chapter 7: 14. But as "life" and "soul," it is in contrast often, or "life" is used for "the soul" in its higher aspect. The same word is used of what is profited and lost in the same act. Thus: "Whosoever will save his life shall lose it;" Matthew 10:39, compare verse 28; chapter 16: 25, 26; Mark 8:35-37 (compare Luke 9:24-26, and John 12:25) and Luke 17:33.
We have then "the soul" used generally for the responsible part, in which we live with God, whose state and movings are expressed in the body's acts, as Matthew 11:29; chapter 16: 26, and the passages of contrast I have referred to. Matthew 26: 38; Mark 8:37, and like passages to Matthew; Mark 14:34; Luke 1:46 (passage cited from Luke); chapter 12: 23; John 12:27; Acts 14:22; chapter 15: 24; perhaps Romans 2: 9; 2 Corinthians 1: 23; Hebrews 6: 19; chapters 10: 39; 13: 17; James 1:21; chapter 5: 20; 1 Peter 1:9, 22; chapter. 2: 11, 25; 4: 19; 2 Peter 2:8, 14; 3 John 2. Here we find contrast with Jewish temporal deliverance.
It is contrasted carefully with "body," Matthew 10:28; Luke 12: 20 (stronger because of verse 19); Acts 2:27, 31 -- practically several of the passages quoted under the last head. Acts 20: 10; compare 1 Kings 17:21, 22. It is also distinguished as the mere living soul from the higher part in which it is in connection with God, through living in Him by the breath of life from Him; 1 Thessalonians 5:23; Hebrews 4:12. Add to this Luke 16, the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. It is distinguished from the power of life in Christ in 1 Corinthians 15:45. Its distinct condition in man is originally founded on Genesis 2:7 -- never said of beasts; hence Acts 17:28. The "souls under the altar" confirm this.
"Spirit" is used often for the soul including the higher part. So even of Jesus, "He gave up the ghost" (paredoken to pneuma). This word we must also examine. It is used not uncommonly for the spiritual part of man in contrast with his body, as Luke 8:55, "Her spirit came again," confirming the clear distinction between the two, as with soul. So where the two latter are also distinguished, spirit, soul, and body. But I think it has another force than "soul," though used in a general way like it, in contrast with "body," as the non-corporeal part of man. "Soul," as connecting itself with its action in the body, though clearly distinct, is more connected with life, and so used for it. "Spirit" is more the active, intelligent consciousness, or the seat of that consciousness, which belongs to the inner man; and just what distinguishes man from the beast is that the latter has merely a living soul connected with an organism, passions, habits, faculties, such as memory, affections; while man has received this state of existence through God's breathing into his nostrils the breath of life -- by the spirit of life he became a living soul. Hence in ordinary language the two may be used as one; because of the pneuma zoes (the spirit of life) he has a psuchen zosan (a living soul). The mere animal has a psuchen zosan, but not through a divine pneuma zoes. The mere breath of natural life is organic, and has nothing to do with this. Hence "spirit" is used for this active, intelligent, consciousness. In the Christian it is connected often with the Holy Spirit which dwells in him, as its activities are produced by it, not the soul. The Spirit and its fruit may thus also characterise the state of the soul. This character of the spirit of man, the connection of the term with active intelligent consciousness is frequently found; Matthew 26: 41, "The spirit indeed is willing"; Mark 2:8, "Jesus perceived in his spirit; chapter 8: 12, "He sighed deeply in his spirit"; Luke 1:80, "Waxed strong in spirit;" chapter 2: 40; chapters 10: 20; 23: 46; John 4:23, 24; chapters. 11: 33; 13: 21; (chapter 19: 30, used in general, so Acts 7:59). Acts 17:16; Romans 1:9; chapter 12: 11; 1 Corinthians 2:11; chapter 5: 3-5 (used in special manner for activity of the inner man and a power, not intelligent, thus contrasted with nous -- proof of the difference of mere mind from the active principle, though usually acting, in the present state of human nature, in it as the present form of its power; so that consciousness, not mind, is essential to it); 1 Corinthians 14:2, 14, 15, etc.; 2 Corinthians 2:13;
chapter 7: 1, here through the mind, verse 13; Galatians 6:18; 1 Thessalonians 5:23; 2 Timothy 4:22; Hebrews 12:23. In Thessalonians and Hebrews, the contrast with body is clear, and in the former with soul also.
I think the Sacraments have a larger bearing than I was aware. They are (1 Corinthians 10) for the wilderness. One introduces into the wilderness, but it is Christ's death (Romans 6), not ours. Only I thereon reckon myself dead as a consequence -- place too in baptism -- in the likeness of His. But we have not in Romans 'resurrection with'; and even where we have, as I think, we must say in Colossians 2, no ascension, we seek the things above, in Canaan. Then the manna was for the wilderness only, and the spiritual drink. That is, one brings into, the other sustains in the wilderness. So we show forth Christ's death "till He come." I take my place in the world, consequent on Christ's death -- a wilderness. It is not the corn of the Land. But we are all One Body. Here, for myself, I have union with the saints, and my place is in virtue of union with Him, still as down here. We are the Body of Christ, as down here -- not as in this world without the Cross, for then I do not know redemption, do not enter into the holiest to worship. I am on earth, but in the consciousness of being member of the One Body, which implies union with Christ. But it is on earth I celebrate it, not in heaven, i.e., not as being there myself. I look at the humiliation as over with Him, but remember Him in it. Note it is not the Passover here; that went with the corn of the Land, Canaan, and circumcision. I am in the fruit of redemption, but in the wilderness, but in the unity of the Body. With the manna we must take in Christ's death, of course, according to John 6. Our service in it is simply owning the preciousness of His death, and till He come. Our state is in resurrection, but we are occupied with, and celebrate His having been once down here, and show forth His death. The question is, Where are we when we celebrate it? In the wilderness. What are we? Members of One Body, united to Christ in fact. In a responsible place in the wilderness, but by redemption, and really united to Christ, or I could not talk of "The Unity of the Body." [1865].
I think of the account of the Passover in Luke we have the sign of the passing away of the old system, and the bringing in of the new. True love to His disciples in, for the last time,
eating with them -- a token of affection, but He will not eat it any more. Then the Passover cup -- fellowship and communion in joy then in it -- this He does not take at all. It was now to be fulfilled in the Kingdom of God, and He does not drink this cup. They are to divide it among themselves; He will not drink of it till the Kingdom of God comes. Then He institutes the new thing in His body broken, the remembrance of a new and better deliverance, and the Cross the new covenant in His blood.
It is striking, to begin with, that in his three acts of the mind, he only speaks of 'doubt,' 'inference,' and 'assent.' He makes 'assent' different from 'inference,' and there he is right. I have often said, an inference is only 'must,' or therefore never really 'is.' Belief of a fact never rests on an inference, but on intuition, sight, etc., or testimony. But a man's disbelieving is not believing the contradictory. Religion is revealed -- rather God and His truth; I do not believe it -- I do not think there is adequate evidence and do not believe it. But I do not believe there is none. If we put truth instead of revealed religion -- and the truth is -- this depends on a religion being in question as revealed. Now certain things being presented to me as revealed, my being unable to receive them is not my saying there is no revealed religion. And when truth is presented to me, it must be specific truth (and there can, if it embraces all our relationship to God, be but one) but if truth be presented to me, my disbelief of it, seeing it must be positive, is not saying 'there is none.' According to Dr. Newman there are three modes of holding and three ways of enunciating propositions -- each corresponding to each -- three mental acts. Taking free-trade as an example, he says: "These three mental acts are doubt, inference and assent. A question is the expression of a doubt; a conclusion is the expression of an act of inference; and an assertion is the expression of an act of assent. To doubt, for instance, is not to see one's way to hold that free-trade is or is not a benefit; to infer, is to hold on sufficient grounds that free-trade may, must, or should be a benefit; to assent to the proposition, is to hold that free-trade is a benefit." "And, in fact, these three modes of entertaining propositions -- doubting them, inferring them, assenting to them, are so distinct in their action, that, when they are severally carried out into the intellectual habits of an individual, they become the principles and notes of three distinct states or characters of mind. For instance, in the case of revealed religion, according as one or other of these is paramount
+Essay in aid of a Grammar of Assent, by John Henry Newman, D.D. of the Oratory. Second edition. London: Burns, Oates and Co., 17 and 18, Portman Street.
within him, a man is a sceptic as regards it; or a philosopher, thinking it more or less probable considered as a conclusion of reason; or he has an unhesitating faith in it, and is recognised as a believer. If he simply disbelieves, or dissents, he is assenting to the contradictory of the thesis, viz., that there is no revelation." This is quite false.
But his logic is wholly at fault too, the comprehension of the word wholly left out. In page 6, he says: "We cannot assent to a proposition, without some intelligent apprehension of it; whereas we need not understand it at all in order to infer it. We cannot give our assent to the proposition that 'X is Z,' till we are told something about one or other of the terms; but we can infer, if 'X is Y, and Y is Z, that X is Z, whether we know the meaning of X and Z' or no." Thus the "is" is absolute, i.e., X must be all Y, and Y must be all x to be always true. Thus, snow is white, white is a colour, therefore snow is a colour. This is nice logic!
What follows is sufficiently judged further on -- the confusion of effect from the thing assented to, and strength in the assent. But further; he says: "The only question is, what measure of apprehension is sufficient. And the answer to this question is equally plain: -- it is the predicate of the proposition which must be apprehended. In a proposition one term is predicated of another; the subject is referred to the predicate, and the predicate gives us information about the subject; -- therefore to apprehend the proposition is to have that information, and to assent to it is to acquiesce in it as true. Therefore I apprehend a proposition, when I apprehend its predicate. The subject itself need not be apprehended per se in order to a genuine assent: for it is the very thing which the predicate has to elucidate, and therefore by its formal place in the proposition, so far as it is the subject, it is something unknown, something which the predicate makes known; but the predicate cannot make it known, unless it is known itself. Let the question be, "What is trade?" here is a distinct profession of ignorance about "trade"; and let the answer be, "trade is the interchange of goods"; trade then need not be known, as a condition of assent to the proposition, except so far as the account of it which is given in answer, "the interchange of goods," makes it known; and that must be apprehended in order to make it known. There is no reason why our knowledge of the subject, whatever it is, should go beyond what the
predicate tells us about it," but a proposition may where it is a complex idea to explain a word, or to render a vague idea definite and clear. Thus, "trade is the interchange of commodities." A child has read a book, and finds "trade," and says, 'What is trade?' "It is the interchange of commodities," is explaining the word by the thing expressed. Or I may say, 'Money is a mere conventional representative,' and, whatever the means employed, bills or gold, trade is really the interchange of commodities -- here it pretends to give the real character of the commerce I have seen going on in the world. Otherwise, a proposition relates to something known objectively, say, as Dr. Newman, lucerne. He states I need not apprehend the subject, and anything more childishly fallacious I never read. I will give his own words. "If a child asks, 'What is lucerne?' and is answered, 'Lucerne is Medicago sativa, of the class Diadelphia and order Decandria'; and henceforth says obediently, 'Lucerne is Medicago sativa,' etc., he makes no act of assent to the proposition which he enunciates, but speaks like a parrot. But if he is told, 'Lucerne is food for cattle,' and is shown cows grazing in a meadow, then, though he never saw lucerne, and knows nothing at all about it, besides what he has learned from the predicate, he is in a position to make as genuine an assent to the proposition 'Lucerne is food for cattle,' on the word of his informant, as if he knew ever so much more about lucerne. And as soon as he has got so far as this, -- he may go further. He now knows enough about lucerne to enable him to apprehend propositions which have lucerne for their predicate, should they come before him for assent, as, 'That field is sown with lucerne,' or 'Clover is not lucerne.'"
In the first place Medicago sativa is merely a change of names, and gives nothing at all, unless a genus, if I know botany. The class and order make me know it is a plant, if I have read Linnaeus, but, the subject, lucerne, not being known by sense, the passage, if I knew Linnaeus by heart, tells me nothing save that the predicate supposes, does not state, that a plant with a Latin name exists, but no more. "But if he is told lucerne is food for cattle," he can assent to the proposition on the word of his informant, as if he knew ever so much more about lucerne." And now we see the utter folly of the man -- he adds: "And is shown cows grazing in a meadow." How does he know that it is lucerne they are eating? He must know it is lucerne, to make the proposition anything at all to him. Suppose
it is clover they are eating, he will call clover lucerne because cows eat it, or he knows somehow lucerne as an object of sense, which is just what Dr. Newman is proving he need not. The proposition must be, 'all that cows eat is lucerne.' Logically he has made the predicate of an universal affirmative universal, instead of particular. "Lucerne is food for cows" only means is one kind of food for cows. Hence, when he sees the cows eating lucerne, he only knows it is a kind of food for cows since they are eating it, but he does not know it is lucerne. If Dr. Newman merely means that seeing cows eating makes him know what the predicate "food for cows" means, it is ridiculous. If it is so, he has only learned that the name "lucerne" is attached to one thing cows eat, but he has no object at all before his mind to which the predicate attaches. If he must see cows eating to know what the predicate means, it is child's play, for then he must be told they are cows, and what eating is, or the predicate is nothing, and he understands that but nothing more of the subject, save the name. Say "Dollum is something cows eat." What do I know about dollum, save that cows eat something men call "dollum." But I should then say, "But what is dollum?" But this child's play is not what Dr. Newman means. For when it is said, "That field is sown with lucerne," it is only when he is told that field is sown with lucerne, if he has not seen lucerne, and known objectively, or now learns by seeing it, he knows no more. We know what lucerne is and hence associate the ideas. But supposing he was told lucerne meant "bread and butter," he would suppose the field, if he assented, sown with bread and butter, for cows might eat that. "Clover is not lucerne," he can know nothing about, unless he knows them both, for cows eat clover, too. It is talking of a known thing, and slily slipping in, "seeing cows grazing in a meadow," which deceives here.
Page 13, he says: "Yet there is a way, in which the child can give an indirect assent even to a proposition, in which he understood neither subject nor predicate. He cannot, indeed, in that case, assent to the proposition itself, but he can assent to its truth." "Thus the child's mother might teach him to repeat a passage of Shakespeare, and when he asked the meaning of a particular line, such as 'The quality of mercy is not strained,' or 'Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied,' she might answer him, that he was too young to understand it yet,
but that it had a beautiful meaning, as he would one day know; and he, in faith on her word, might give his assent to such a proposition -- not, that is, to the line itself, which he had got by heart, and which would be beyond him, but to its being true, beautiful, and good." "It is, indeed, plain, that, though the child assents to his mother's veracity, without, perhaps, being conscious of his own act, nevertheless that particular assent of his has a force and life in it which the other assents have not, in proportion as he apprehends the proposition, which is the subject of it, with greater keenness and energy than belongs to his apprehension of the others. Her veracity and authority is to him no abstract truth or item of general knowledge, but is bound up with that image and love of her person which is part of himself, and makes a direct claim on him for his summary assent to her general teachings." Now if he heard his mother say, "Virtue turns vice," he would have no idea in his head, if he did not know what "virtue" is; he might think it meant bad habits, or human nature, or taste, or anything you please, and he would learn nothing of what was meant to be conveyed. If he was sure his mother told him, his only real thought would be, "My mother tells the truth," but that that was true he could not say, he does not believe it. He has no proposition in his mind. And when Dr. Newman speaks of one assent being stronger than another, as when his mother's truthfulness is before him, it is a totally different matter -- feeling, caring for, not assenting -- and, if the mother was all wrong, would lead astray, because feeling is no real ground of assent, and may influence the heart contrary to the truth. Dr. Newman's mother led him up, I suppose, in Protestantism as true, and, as he now believes, brought him up entirely in error. God may act on feeling, conscience for the truth, then influence and truth go together. But that can be said of none else.
Dr. Newman partly distinguishes afterwards between inference and assent, but he has no idea of believing what God has said, simply because He has said it. Quoting from Locke's "Degrees of Assent,"+he says, "Where any particular thing, consonant to the constant observation of ourselves, and others in the like case, comes attested by the concurrent reports of all that mention it, we receive it as easily, and build as firmly
+Essay concerning Human Understanding, Book 4, chapter 16.
upon it, as if it were certain knowledge, and we reason and act thereupon, with as little doubt as if it were perfect demonstration ... . These probabilities rise so near to certainty, that they govern our thoughts as absolutely, and influence all our actions as fully, as the most evident demonstration ... . Our belief thus grounded, rises to assurance." When we talk of "belief rising to assurance," with Locke, it is all very well, because it is mere human reason, and, for practical purposes, we must act on what is adequately proved as true though only "exceeding high probability," we have, save what is seen, nothing more. But all this shuts out divine faith. There is no rising to anything, no exercise of the mind to prove, no degree of anything, no possibility of human deceit. If God has spoken, it is the truth. But the whole of his reasoning in the chapter on assent, considered as unconditional, though he separates inference and assent, yet he speaks only of "the facts of human nature as they are found in the concrete action of life," i.e., men are certain enough to act on it, is all true. But on page 169, he insists that assent is "unconditional, and' that in 'subject-matters which admit of nothing higher than probable reasoning."
Page 171. He says, "None of us can think or act without the acceptance of truths, not intuitive, not demonstrated, yet sovereign." But some believe that things exist besides ourselves, "that there is a Supreme Being." He insists our nature is so constituted -- so do I. "Nor," he adds, "has any philosophical theory the power to force on us a rule which will not work for a day." Now we have here inference, and, besides that, convictions which flow from "the constitution of our nature," of which we have no doubt (till we reason, and which reason may cast into doubt, rightly or wrongly); I admit all this, but none of this is divine faith. That "England is an island" is no example, because visible. "An island" means what I see, or others do there. He insists (page 179) that all this "does not interfere with the pre-eminence of strength in divine faith, which has a supernatural origin, when compared with all belief which is merely human and natural." But still, it is only because it has its origin in grace and its motions. "The greater certainty is according to appreciation, not intuition, for natural truths are often more clearly perceived!" "The connection of knowledge with truth is more apparent than the connection of faith with the same!" And another
author, he quotes, says: "The adhesion of the will is stronger." And again, "The difference of certainty from the difference of motives." This only regards an exterior difference, for every natural certainty, formally looked at, is equal. "There is a transcendant adhesion of mind, intellectual and moral."
Page 218. "A man is infallible, whose words are always true; a rule is infallible, if it is unerring in all its possible applications. An infallible authority is certain in every particular case that may arise; but a man who is certain in some one definite case, is not on that account infallible." "I may be certain that the Church is infallible, while I am myself a fallible mortal; otherwise, I cannot be certain that the Supreme Being is infallible until I am infallible myself. It is a strange objection, then, which is sometimes made to Catholics, that they cannot prove and assent to the Church's infallibility, unless they first believe in their own. Certitude, as I have said, is directed to one or other definite concrete proposition. I am certain of proposition one, two, three, four, five, one by one, each by itself. I may be certain of one of them, without being certain of the rest; that I am certain of the first makes it neither likely nor unlikely that I am certain of the rest; but were I infallible, then I should be certain, not only of one of them, but of all, and of many more besides, which have never come before me as yet. Therefore we may be certain of the infallibility of the Church, while we admit that in many things we are not, and cannot be, certain at all."
Infallibility, as I have remarked elsewhere, is wrongly used. Truth cannot be infallible, nor anything actually revealed. It is simply absolute truth. It is more appropriately applied to Scripture, so far as there is an immense mass of truth there which I have not discovered, and I am sure all is true there with divine authority, but this is only used in a secondary way, as Paul says, "The Scripture foreseeing ... preached before." But God is infallible, i.e., cannot be mistaken or deceived. Infallibility is not simply always speaking the truth, but the impossibility of mistaking, or deceiving, or shortcoming. It involves not mistaking in anything, as well as not deceiving. Now this is part of my idea of God, the true God. If He is not infallible, He is not God, He that is true, to whom all things are open.
Dr. Newman is audacious enough to say, "If I must be infallible to know the Church is such, I must be infallible to know
God is such." This is every way false, and savours of blasphemy, and proves only one thing, as is evident from all he says, that he has never known the testimony of God as truth. It would have been impossible for him to use this logic if he had. But that is all it proves. And it is wholly without foundation, for 'know' has a different meaning. When I say, 'I know God is infallible,' though I dislike the expression, 'I know' is merely the intuitive conviction of what God is, not knowledge from proof -- it is part of the nature of God, necessary to His nature -- a fallible God is not what 'God' means. But I do not know whether an assembly is infallible. It is not so by necessity of nature, so that it is not an assembly if it be not. Nay! no assembly of creatures is or can be. It is the property of a creature to be fallible in itself. God may keep me right through grace, I will suppose, but in the sense it is used of God, I deny that the Assembly of God is infallible. Dr. Newman's argument is bad, because I have the proof that God has promised to keep it from all mistakes. But what has to be kept is not, per se, infallible, and it has to be proved that what is not necessarily infallible is made so in its judgments by Another. Of that I have to judge, and I may make a mistake, and I cannot say absolutely it is infallible. I may be certain, but that proves nothing, because I may be wrong, and it is a thing to be proved. I have not to judge if God be infallible -- He is not God at all if He be not. It is a necessary element of Godhead. I do not know God at all, if I think it has to be proved.
I see no sign of faith, or moral perception in Dr. Newman; and lowering God in order to exalt the Church, i.e., man, is a sign of deep moral alienation from God.
The whole force of 2 Corinthians 5 is the power of life in Christ manifested in resurrection, and complete in glory, founded on death so as to put a total end to the first man and to sin (He having been made sin), and hence an entrance as out of the first into the new creation where all things are of God. As to this, it is a most comprehensive statement. I would show the principle of this briefly. Beside death and judgment, we have it applied to our course here. All were dead since Christ died for all -- they have to live to Him who died for them and rose again. But this goes very far, because Christ Himself, in so far as He came connecting Himself with men in the flesh, disappears. He came under law -- Son of David -- a minister of the circumcision -- of whom according to the flesh Christ came. All this is gone. He died as to this, and died for all -- all were dead. Hence the Christian knows no one after the flesh in his new nature; risen in Christ, he has nothing, no connection with the world of Adam the other side of death. That belonged to the life of flesh, and the link is broken in the death of Christ, and the life in which he lives does not belong to it. He is entered into, as risen, and is of the new Creation -- the old things are wholly passed away, he is dead, and has no more to say to them. The life he lives belongs to another order of things, and he is entered into them in that life, having died out of the others, or holding himself for dead -- Christ having died to and out of it -- and risen up from this in a new life, Christ. In this new Creation all things are of God (we the firstfruits of it), all entirely new. Two things are attached to this: we are reconciled to God -- we are made the righteousness of God. But how entirely new all this is!
Note, the point of connection between the beginning and end of the chapter is, that the love of Christ being in his heart, the thought of the terror of the Lord urged him to persuade men. Then this love of Christ, i.e., the way it showed itself, brought out the great truth of men's state and their bringing into a wholly new Creation which identifies itself with that power of life with which the chapter begins, while all is grounded, as to righteousness, on Christ being made sin for us. In the beginning, the power of this life, as to death and as to judgment, is remarkably brought out. On the whole,
the deliverance is astonishingly developed in this chapter. It is a wonderful chapter.
Note further in 2 Corinthians 5, after, as already noted, speaking of our direct positive condition as flowing from divine power in life, bringing us into glory, death being wholly annihilated, he contemplates death for us, as having this life, and it is of course gain. Here oneself (not in an evil sense) is brought in. And this, note, is the motive for our seeking to be acceptable to Him, knowing we shall be with Him in glory, and even our souls, if we die before the glory come. We like to be agreeable to One we love when with Him, besides there is the solemnity as well as the joy of the Lord's presence. But then, in taking up the second part of man's lot -- the judgment -- we get a distinct difference of the great principle, and the effect, where Christ's love is truly known. In the latter case, a person does not think of himself at all -- the love of Christ constrains him, and he thinks of others. Thus responsibility and being manifested before the judgment-seat, and receiving the things done, is kept as solid ground of warning before the soul. And there is the active toil of grace to be acceptable and pleasing to Him. But when judgment comes as terror before his mind as it is, the Apostle only thinks of others through the constraining love of Christ. Perhaps Paul had been accused of being beside himself, but at any rate he distinguishes between his own joy and blessing in rising up to God by the power of the Holy Ghost, and the sober judgment of what was suitable. I apprehend he spoke of his condition as in chapter 4, and even in chapter I, for their sakes, still his doing it thus brought him to the point of responsibility and view of the judgment. But the effect of this on himself, as we have seen, was to urge his love to others. This love in Christ being in the death of Christ had a double effect. He did not know Christ as a living Messiah before His death any more. He was now not his own at all, but Christ's. So if any man were in Christ, he was of and in a new Creation, of which Christ was the first fruits in resurrection, where all things are of God who has reconciled us to Himself by that work. The whole of that is then set out, verses 19-21.
So, how very different the character (also noticed) of Philippians 2 and 3 -- the subduedness, readiness to suffer, watchfulness for God's presence and character in the midst of this world, in the first; and the spiritual energy which
looks forward to the next, and glory in it, Christ in glory being before his mind to win in the latter. I do not know but the first is the deepest. In the second we win Christ and glory -- blessed thing surely -- but it is more what we get. In the former, we are like Him, and His love and character are more thought of, and we living in and according to them to His glory. But both are perfect in their place. So most gracious, divine affections come out in chapter 2, but earnest zeal against evil, inconsistent with the glory, in professors in chapter 3. Still, in love, weeping; still chapter 2: 17, 30, enters far more into saintly feelings. We are among the chasidim (saints) on the earth, not thinking with weeping of those who slight the glory.
In sum, we have in 2 Corinthians 5, the proper condition of the Christian. First, looking, God having wrought him for it, to having, according to what was divine power in life, what was mortal swallowed up of life. Death had wholly lost its power. Next, if he died, being so wrought, and having the earnest, being absent from the body and present with the Lord, these were his living, active motives as to his walk. Thirdly, as the judgment-seat of Christ was there, the effect of this on him was (and could not be with what went before, that he was wrought for glory), not to make him look on to being manifested, but his being now manifested to God. He was in the light really, walking in it in respect of that judgment, so that all was manifested to God now, before whom he walked, in the glory (for when we appear before the judgment-seat, we shall be in the glory, and glorified, and our hearts judge everything according to the glory -- so by faith, now). Then if he did think of the terror he thought of others; it woke up in his heart that love of Christ which had been shown in that which had brought him into that state, and proved all not brought in to be dead, turning it thus downward towards those who had no part in it. A blessed state -- upwards, in power over death, to God, all in perfect light -- or, according to Christ's own love, downward to sinners! What a chasid (saint) the Christian is, as to his position, by Christ! Nor do I at all say that this latter part is in any way inferior to the other. It takes more out of self into God's own nature. As I have noted as to Philippians 2 and 3, this leads more to God, that to glory delivering from the world. Still he would win Christ. It may be a lowly thing to work out our salvation,
but it is in view of God's character, and God works in us. So we are sons of God, followers of His in nature and character. So, in Psalm 16, it is Christ's taking the place of humiliation with the saints, by which he finds Jehovah's presence fulness of joy. Psalm 17 is righteousness, and glory in waking up. So, in Philippians 3, not character but righteousness. But Philippians hardly goes on to the presence of God.
Note too the character of experiences in Philippians and 2 Corinthians, and what is practically such in 1 Corinthians . I have already spoken of Philippians, but I return to it here to compare it with the others. It is as walking in the Spirit, and filled with it, being above all that Resh could suggest. Flesh and sin are not at all recognised, thought of, or named, save as once saying "no confidence in flesh," and that is religiously. Hence we find he is not insensible to trial, but, by the wings of faith above it, all distress turns to his salvation. Self is so gone, and he so blessed he does not, for self, know whether to choose life or death, only as it is better for the Church he shall stay, deciding by faith his own trial for life. Careful for nothing, only doing one thing, pressing onward to win Christ and the prize of His calling, rejoicing in the Lord always, able to do all things through Him who strengthens him. Such is experience when laid by in the power of the Spirit. It was not his present engagement in the active service in the conflict, but his rising in the power of the Spirit above it all. In 1 Corinthians we have the Christian at the other extremity. They were going on, as we know, very badly. Paul would not even go there, and deals in earnest warning and reproof. But what is his own position as to them? Confidence in God. "Ye come behind in no gift; waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." God is faithful, by whom ye were called into the fellowship (knowledge) of our Lord Jesus Christ, who also shall confirm you to the end that ye may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. From this point he can deal with them as connected with Christ. There is a reality in being a Christian, even when going on badly, though that is never allowed. So in Galatians, where he stood even more in doubt of them because it touched doctrine, "I have confidence in you through the Lord."
Now in 2 Corinthians we have experimental exercised faith in the conflict; not going on badly, yet one trusting in grace for those who did, not rising on the wings of faith above all
the trials, but exercise of heart finding God in them; and this too is very precious. The trials are of various kinds. First, violent persecution, so as to despair of life. He had the sentence of death in himself (this is the secret of force in trial) not to trust in self but God who raises the dead; two things, carrying the sentence of death, the Cross on self, God sending it practically, so he says further on, but it is God meeting the man in the putting down of self. This is brought out beautifully in chapter 4: troubled man, not distressed -- God is there; persecuted man, not forsaken -- God there; perplexed man, not in despair -- God there; cast down man, not destroyed -- God there. Now this is the whole matter, and then follows the spiritual mind as to it, already quoted.
Then anxieties for the Church, could not go to Corinth, could not stay at Troas, no Titus. In Macedonia, without fighting, within fears -- doubted as to having sent the Epistle. God comforts those that are cast down. Poor vessel, but rich grace!
Then positive danger from flesh. He goes to the third heaven -- a man in Christ there, he can glory, but flesh would glory too -- a thorn comes. This he would have taken away, but looks to the Lord. It hindered his work, made his bodily presence weak, speech contemptible, tended to his being despised in preaching. But the Lord was there -- flesh, self, was put down, and Christ, strength and grace came in, and he glories in the infirmity. Now all this is power in weakness -- weakness felt as to the vessel, which we need, but therein God most blessedly and graciously meeting us, and making Himself better known. It is very instructive and sweet to the soul. How gracious of God, and wonderful!
But further, in 2 Corinthians 5, in turning, after the full positive condition of the Christian, to meet the natural portion of man by the same truth of life in Christ glorified, note that death is spoken of because a Christian may die. Death is not in itself set aside; it is a gain. Judgment is not, as to the Christian, at all. We must all be manifested there to receive the things done in the body. He knows the terror of the Lord, but the only action of this on his mind is to lead him to persuade others. We are always confident if we think of death, because we are formed for the glory into which Christ has entered in the power of life, and have the earnest of the Spirit -- it is, if we die, going from the burdening body and being present with
the Lord. But judgment we shall never come into. We persuade others because of it -- we are manifested to God, that is its present practical effect.
In the experiences of 2 Corinthians as in Philippians we see how the fellowship and love of the saints are ministered to, and here connected with a difference in respect of ministry -- in Philippians not so, as the Apostle was shut up; a difference interesting in its character. There, "Work out your own salvation, for it is God who worketh in you" -- a word important in these days; here, "Death worketh in us, but life in you." Yet still there is the eventual working of grace, and all things, the Apostle himself, are for the Church's, the saints' sake.
I go back to point out that in 1 Corinthians 1, man is put down in himself. The power of God and wisdom of God is in what is foolishness for man. God's folly is wiser than man, and things that are not bring to nought things that are, that no flesh should glory in His presence. Then the new thing is brought in. "We are of God in Christ Jesus," and all that clothes us and brings us into blessing is in Christ too. "Of him are ye," i.e., of God, "in Christ Jesus," and "He is, of God, made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification." It is in life and competency for blessing, and entering into all -- Christ -- the new thing. In chapter 2 he will know nothing else but Christ in his ministry, and that in the way it was folly to men, but in this, flesh must be put down. When a great work was to be done, he was in weakness, and fear, and much trembling, and his speech was not with persuasive words of men, but in demonstration of the Spirit, and in power.
Note also in 2 Corinthians 3 and 4 there is the having received this ministry (the glory of God in the face of Jesus), we use great plainness of speech. Having received this ministry, we faint not. The revelation of the glory, so that righteousness is in grace for us, and the glory its known place -- the glory of God is in righteousness, bringing us then into it gives a ministry as open as the unveiling of the glory. But then it is in a power which, overcoming death and setting Man in glory, hinders fainting, though the vessel be an earthen one. The heart, on the contrary, carries death in this, that the power and glory may be itself, or themselves, alone.
In chapter 4, death, as the utter setting aside of man (as well as atonement in Christ) has a far more important character than we are apt to think. It judges, of course, the flesh as
hopelessly bad, but it ends it. It declares, as Christ's death, that no link could be formed with man. Divine, infinite love came down, and, while divine, suited itself to every want and sorrow of man; His whole condition, because the children were in flesh and blood, "he also likewise took part of the same," but remained alone till death. Thus, His death was the solemn declaration that there could be no link between grace and flesh. Hence, as His disciple, we must hate our father, mother, wife, life -- all that is a link here -- to follow Him; forsake all we have. It may be outwardly, always as regards the new life. It is not in the old relationships, though it respects them as formed of God, and all God's ordinances, but in it we reckon ourselves dead, crucified with Christ -- our life only a life which is of Him as risen; He, as risen, is our Life. But having taken our sins and died, they are gone, passed away with the life He laid down. Then, if we are dead with Him, we have not the nature, as in Him, which had to do with sin, the world, law -- I am not alive in it at all -- I am in Christ, alive by Him as a quickening Spirit. I eat His flesh, drink His blood, realise His death, non-existence as to this world, and so abide in Him, live dia auton (through, by reason of, Him) as He lived dia ton patera through, by reason of, the Father). How completely this sets aside the old thing! I am dead and gone as to flesh and all it had to say to. Yet, because I am alive, and this only is Christianity, I have to seek to realise it, may at first see only forgiveness by it. But except I eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink His blood, I have no life in me. If I do, I am alive in, and by reason of, and for Him. But it is death to all that was connected with nature, because of nature. No doubt it will contend against us, but we are not in it now at all. How immense and total a change is Christ's death to us! Then we have to seek, "always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal body.'
I have spoken of chapter 4 as giving the realisation of Romans, our being dead to sin, and so partly of Colossians, only it goes further; but we find the Ephesians and the other half of Colossians, as to our previous state, too, in chapter 5: 14. All were dead, or Christ need not have gone there. It is still practical, but not new position, but here also consequent duty. It does refer, in general terms, and necessarily, to the new Creation, but the point insisted on is the claim of
Christ's death -- that we should live to Him who died and rose again for us. This is analogous to Romans 6, not as dead with, indeed, and afterwards to live to God as alive in Him, but, as I have said, Christ's claim by death. We were dead, had all died -- if we live (which is then a new creation) we are to live to Him who died and rose again. Still it is only life, not "quickened together with him." But it takes up the previous state, as Ephesians, and part Colossians, we were dead -- not we have to die, i.e., have died to the old man, in Christ, but it puts us into the sphere of the new Creation, as a man in Christ, but it is not here, any more than Romans, "risen with Christ," and God is referred to as in Romans 6, "All things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself" -- a new nature and state of things. Remark too how very clearly, in Colossians, the state and ground of it is laid before the walk, in each case. We are dead and risen -- "Be not therefore subject," etc., and "Set your affections on things above." "Ye are dead, and your life hid," etc. -- "Therefore mortify your members." "Do not lie, for ye have put off the old man with his deeds, and put on the new," etc. "Put on ... as the elect of God, holy and beloved." It is a recognised principle, but the ground work of exhortation comes out singularly clearly here.
Chapter 5 is interesting too in this way: after giving the full effect of the new power of divine life in Christ, reaching to mortality being swallowed up in life, it turns and meets the whole case of the full effect of the old thing, death and judgment; death (we having life) is "absent from the body, and present with the Lord" -- judgment makes us, knowing the terror of the Lord, anxious to persuade others, the love of Christ constraining us; compare John 5:24, and Hebrews 9:27. The power is in "God who raiseth the dead," or has risen, and given us Christ risen, in this power, as Life. It is founded on His being made sin for us, we the righteousness of God in Him; the practical result is, knowing no man after the flesh -- living to Him who died and rose for us, and seeking in all to be agreeable to Him. But it meets Hebrews 9:27, wholly and exactly.
Finally, note well the effect of the full operation of grace, in setting one in a new position, in the power of life in Christ, is to bring one to God. It is not natural conscience or law, but what suits God's presence which is then in question. This gives us, mark, the true sanctifying character of grace -- the
effect of the full unclouded light of God on the conscience. Hence the Apostle speaks of the terror of the Lord, but note the effect -- he persuades men. Any alarm to him is out of the question; he has got there, being always confident by a share with Christ in the glory which is found there. But he sees its effect on man, and persuades them (he sees it, because he has a man's conscience, salutarily, even for himself, as to walk under the influence of this presence) but it has a wholesome and salutary effect upon him, not of uncertainty -- he is made manifest unto God; most wholesome and preserving truth! The grace then which has perfectly saved us, and brought us to God Himself, makes the presence and light of God, of Him who is Light, the measure of conscience and of right and wrong for him who is brought to be in it, and know it by grace. Nothing can be a greater proof of the perfectness of his position than that the effect of God's presence, of the terror of the Lord, was to push him to persuade others, the love of Christ constraining him; for this was the true result of all -- that he was possessed of this love. God's presence, we have seen, his place by grace, and in holiness, according to glory into which he was brought; but, as to man, it told another tale. The manner of coming there, what was clear to his soul, had passed sentence of death upon all that man was, viewed in the first Adam, for the Christ of his affections, whose love he knew, had died and risen again. If he had known a Christ in association with living men, yet it had been shown there was no possible link between them. He had died for all (borne the sin which made union in the flesh impossible; when the truth had come out -- what had been to his mind a Messiah, crowning joy of man in the flesh, was a dying Messiah for what was altogether dead in sin). Now he could only know Him thus -- men belonged to Him, if at all, as dead and risen. They belonged to a new Creation, of which He was Head as risen. Old things were gone, all things new, all things of God who had reconciled them to Himself by Christ. Hence he knew these two things -- Christ down here, not the culminating blessing of man in the flesh, and the Glory of Israel, but God in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and as Man, He who knew no sin made sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. We know then God as Love, in Christ, towards us as sinners. That is the way we know Him, active in love, and, if the question of
righteousness be raised, we are the righteousness of God in Him. Wondrous result of Christ's death! God known only as Love -- ourselves God's righteousness in Christ! God in Christ Love -- man in Christ God's righteousness! It is a wondrous salvation, a divine work and wisdom.
Returning for a moment to Philippians 3, the more I read it the more clear the setting aside of the first or old man becomes. The Cross being the point of division, the resurrection, the beginning of the new, identified with the acceptance of the atonement. Knowing no man after the flesh is identified with this. Man had, with every advantage, both seen and hated both Christ and His Father -- the world was judged -- the Son of Man lifted up. This puts the Church too in a peculiar position, because the Man of God's counsels, the Son is not revealed till He come, "The Son of Man be come," "I will raise him up at the last day." Even if received then, this was the portion of him who did so; and the whole statement is connected with eating His flesh, and drinking His blood. Hence, too, the Cross is our portion, if we suffer with Him, for nothing is fulfilled, as yet, save the foundation work and the coming of the Holy Ghost; we are in a suspended time. But the Cross lays the basis of all. Every question of good and evil has come to an issue in it. But the first man is condemned in it -- condemned but gone, for faith that is -- crucified with Christ. There is an end of man morally, in every sense; judgment not executed. The second Man must take His power for that -- Son of God and Son of Man; but morally man's history is closed. It was the "end of the ages." Not only "he that believeth not is condemned already," but he is found to be "dead in sins," and it is a new creation beyond death, sins, Satan's power, judgment, through redemption and a new life. Not merely quickened by Christ, but quickened together with Him out of death, where we were lying, and He came down. The basis is what God is, and God Himself, "All things of God." The Law assumed the first, living, responsible Adam. See Colossians 2 and 2 Corinthians 5:17. There is the difference of the bringing in of death, man being looked at as living in the old man, which is in the Cross, and seeing we were dead in sins, and a new creation. Romans fully develops the former. It is found also in Colossians 2; 2 Corinthians 5:14 et seq; and Ephesians 2 and Colossians 2:14, the latter. [1874.]
Emmanuel, Jehovah the Saviour, Messiah, but rejected and cast out, and His presence then in Israel, the Church, and Kingdom in glory take the place of. In chapter 8, Jehovah to the Jews -- grace, for faith, to the Gentiles, and bearing Israel's sorrows -- but the Son of man has not where to lay His head -- companion of His disciples, though seemingly asleep in the ship. He went with the godly Remnant to John Baptist. But note here, that in Luke it is not "When he putteth forth his own sheep, he goeth before them," but when all the people were baptised, He also is baptised. He throws Himself in among them when so manifested. In the case of the sheep (John 10), He is going out. It is not so marked in Matthew. But this is that it is the Remnant, in contrast with the Pharisees and Sadducees, are accepted -- the feeble Remnant that had been astray, now returning, making ready a people -- those, the generation of vipers. The Jews rush to ruin -- the world will not receive Him. Chapter 9 has been noted. Here we have, as all this is grace, chapter 8, His Person, chapter 9, the character of His service. When the Pharisees blaspheme the continuation of grace (verse 34) they are taken no notice of; and praying the Lord of the harvest is our path, and, in this mind, He sends out (chapter 10) His labourers in Israel, and it continues. Chapter 10 divides at verse 14; verse 23, "Till the Son of man be come" (Church time, properly speaking, and Gentiles are passed over). Chapter 11 we have had pretty fully, only the testimony of grace is practically closed and rejected, both as to John and Christ, and Christ remains alone as Son unknown, revealing the Father, and to Him the weary are to come, as revealing the Father, and lowly and meek in heart, in obedience Himself. Hence the seal of the covenant is dealt with, the generation disowned and judged -- its last estate the power of Satan. Christ disowns His natural connection in flesh with Israel, and owns only those who are His by the Word. This brings in chapter 13, often spoken of.
In the end of chapter 13 we find the rejection of Christ by His own country; and, in chapter 14, the actual cutting off of John by Herod. Then we have the actual presence of Christ Jehovah, the Church viewed as to position, on His return, and His return to the world, i.e., satisfies the poor with bread.
Then Peter walks on the water to meet Him out of the ship. Then He is fully received where He was rejected.
In chapter 15, we find the whole moral condition, and ground of relationship with God, reasoned out. Ritual, traditional tradition wholly worthless and vain. All that the Father had not planted would be rooted up. It was the blind leading the blind -- both would fall into the ditch. Then the heart of man -- what came out of it. Then over and paramount to dispensational curse (Canaan), hardened state (Tyre and Sidon), God's heart beyond mere faithfulness to promise -- a beautiful and blessed picture -- we have the selfishness of man's heart, disregarding even promise, in the disciples. Then the continuation of grace to the Remnant in God's supremacy above their evil, not twelve -- human administrative perfection -- but seven, what is spiritual, above failure in man. Then the Church, which Christ builds on the confession of His being the Son of the living God, and the disciples are forbidden to say any more that He is the Christ. (Note Christ is the Builder, and the Church is not built yet.) Then the keys of the Kingdom of heaven are given to Peter, and the power of binding and loosing. The Lord's followers must take up the Cross too, for their souls' sake and for the glory's sake. Then, chapter 17, the Kingdom of glory is revealed (we have not the going into the cloud, i.e., the heavenly part of it, as in Luke) but the Son of man must suffer. The disciples cannot use the power. Christ will soon go, but till then grace and power are exercised for the need of faith, as before. But He insists on rejection and resurrection. He is Son of the Lord of the Temple, and Peter with Him -- but "We will not offend"; He is divine in knowledge, but submits, as a present thing, to Judaism -- is divine in power, and disposes of creation, but "That take ... for me and thee," identifying now the disciples with Himself in Spirit.
In chapter 18 we find the spirit in which the disciples are to walk on the new ground on which they were set as to judging themselves, their own spirit and towards others; and here we get Christ's presence in the midst of two or three, taking the place of the synagogue as the sphere of discipline, and exclusion from the place of blessing. Finally, the spirit they were to be of developed in forgiveness. I have no doubt the unforgiving servant depicts (though a general principle) the Jewish people rejecting grace in their own spirit.
In chapter 19 we find certain great elements of the principles of the new power brought into the world by redemption, and its connection with nature as God formed it, and man's actual estate, and the world, in which even the Law gets put on its full ground. First, God's natural order is owned and maintained in its binding character. Moses and Law adapted to men was no rule here. From the beginning it was not so. What was in the beginning was of God. That remains good. But a power has come in which takes a man out of the whole course and order of mere nature, verses 11, 12. Nature is owned, but spiritual power can raise above nature. So children presenting the confidence, and simplicity, and absence of evil lusts as to manifestation, present an object cherished by the Lord. But, in its actual and best forms, nature is really but sin and alienation from God. One comes who outwardly had kept the Law. The Lord first rejects all good in man -- "Why callest thou me good? There is none good ... but God." But there is an ordained way of entering into life (the young man had said eternal life, the Lord not) keeping the commandments. Then the Lord takes the ground of the entire surrender of self, and following Him. This detects the lust which the Law, as spiritual, brings to light. The upright, law-keeping man preferred his possessions to Christ. This tested his heart, his state. It was alienated from God presented in grace in Christ; and this was the real question as to being saved; hence it is impossible with men, but with God all things are possible. Then comes actual dispensational dealings. In the Kingdom -- the regeneration, when the new state of things would be come in in power -- those who had given up all would be on their thrones, and would have everlasting life, besides a hundredfold for all given up. Only the apparently most forward here might be last in the end, for we must act by grace, not take reward as a motive, though given as encouragement when all was given up for Christ. God does what He will with His own. We must trust Him, and labour. Agreement may get its penny (so dealt God with the Jews) faith gets according to the heart of God, and as He is minded to set people. This parable corrects what might be falsely taken out of the doctrine of reward. Further, it is ordained of God, "Given to them for whom it is prepared of my Father." Christ only took the lowly place, and the Cross, not the patronage in His Kingdom. It was a divine ordinance, and sovereign grace by which any place was
attained -- not Messiah giving places in His Kingdom, but what belonged to the new, in revelation and eternal counsels of God, founded on the Cross, and in connection with the Father. They must accordingly learn to walk in lowliness. Then chapter 20: 29 begins the history of the end.
The character of Matthew is not only transitional, but it seems to me preparatory, i.e., it looks, though disclosing other things, to the coming in of the Kingdom, and speaks, and gives directions to the disciples on the supposition of its coming in in
power, and that as a proximate thing. This is a very important principle; see chapters 10, 18, and even 13 and 15.
Note, the beginning of Matthew is exceedingly interesting too in its order -- Messiah, the Christ, and the Kingdom, and this giving place, on rejection by the people, to the Son of man suffering, and the Kingdom in mystery. But first we have the genealogy to David and Abraham. Thereupon we have the two titles of excellency (in connection with Judaism) -- Emmanuel, God with us, and then the Christ of promise, the King; and the Gentiles come to own Him in Israel. But thereon, the false king seeks His ruin, and, rejected, He recommences the new history of Israel, as God's Son called out of Egypt, and, on His return, He is a Nazarene from His brethren, and is in Galilee despised. Then John Baptist comes to announce judgment, and the Kingdom, as messenger before the Lord's face, and calls to repentance because the Kingdom was near. Christ then takes place with the godly Remnant, according to Psalm 16, who own God's testimony -- though more fit to baptise than be baptised, but thus both He and John accomplished righteousness in their place from God But what profound and touching humiliation! But, in this place, the heavens opened on Him -- He is sealed of the Holy Ghost, and the Father owns Him as the Son. Thereon He takes the place of temptation for His people, in the endurance of the Spirit, and use of the Word by which man lives, and binds the strong man, returns and spoils his goods, calls disciples, heals the sick, cleanses lepers, casts out demons, and then, chapters 5-7, gives the principles of His Kingdom. I add further what is not noticed, in what follows. In chapter 8 He proves Himself Jehovah in grace, of Himself, yet takes the ground of simple submission to the law of Moses. But then the outgoing of the Kingdom from Israel is evident -- there was more faith in a Gentile, and the children of the Kingdom would
be cast out, and many come from East and West, and North and South, and sit down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the Kingdom of heaven. He identifies Himself with the sorrows and sicknesses of Israel (as indeed ours) but is utterly rejected, and as Son of man has not where to lay His head, but followed in giving up all and relinquishing every tie. Storms, and all might arise, He could rest in peace, sleeping in the ship -- rest among men He had never -- and surely His disciples were in absolute safety with Him. Still divine power having delivered those most under the power of Satan, the unclean (figure of Israel rejecting Christ, and rejected) rush headlong into ruin. Such a Christ the country would not have. The Lord was too near them.
In the ninth chapter we have Christ, the Jehovah of Psalm 103, who forgives sins and heals infirmities, but receives publicans, in grace and power; ministering in no way to the present pride of the Jewish self-righteousness, and, in not following their ways, shows the serious truth that the new wine of divine power and work could not be put into old battles. Galled to heal the dying daughter of His people, it is shown that whoever has faith is healed by virtue in Him, and then He raises the dead child, as in God's eyes, not dead but sleeping, and to be raised though dead indeed as to state and fact. Verse 27 begins rather another subject. The Lord shows His power to Jewish faith, according to the position He presented Himself in. He gives eyes and tongue to His blind and dumb people. The Pharisees blaspheme, but He continues His work in grace, without taking notice of them, because the harvest was great, and desires the disciples to seek that the Lord of the harvest would raise up labourers, and thereupon He sends out His Apostles into the field (Israel) only as Himself, and then, and authoritatively, securing all they needed, and themselves in it. In this chapter we have therefore a full exposé of the ministry of those sent of the Lord in Israel, as such, from beginning to end -- their sufferings, relationships with Gentiles, and effect of ministry, power of the Spirit, or rather inspiration, but all in Israel. It is an important chapter in this respect.
In chapter 11 He discusses His relationship with John, gives instead of receiving testimony from him (John, coming individually, owns Him on His own testimony) and then the reception, or rather rejection of John and Himself -- there was
no heart to enter into the testimony of the Lord by them -- and reproaches the cities which had seen His miracles with their unbelief. He submits to the sovereignty of the Father in revealing it to babes and hiding it from the wise and prudent -- His spirit agreed to it, His soul submitted to it. And thereon His glory opens out to view. It was not simply Messiah, but the same before the rejected Messiah was: All things delivered to the Son by the Father, and no one knew Him, and no one knew the Father but He, and He to whom He should reveal Him. The Jews ought to have received their Messiah, and recognised Him who spake and wrought as never man did; but the truth was, what He was was entirely out of their sphere of apprehension. He alone could reveal the Father. His glory thus shining out, on His rejection, in its true full character, which they did not understand at all, He takes the place of full and tender grace towards need and weariness. In chapter 11 we have the rejected Son of David as Son of man, Lord of the Sabbath, and, in grace, liberty to do good. This broke, as to title, the covenant with the Jews, of which the Sabbath was sign. But He is there in meekness, and unobtrusiveness, till He send forth judgment, and the Gentiles should trust in Him, and the renewed blasphemy of the Pharisees is now depicted in its true colours. Jonah, or rather Nineveh, would condemn the nation; the queen of the south would condemn them. The unclean spirit (of idolatry) which going out had left the house empty, would return with worse ones, and the Jews be worse than ever. And the Lord disclaims all natural tie, and owns only those who do His Father's will which was in heaven. Then He begins the explanation of His service as Sower.
With regard to questions that have been raised: Matthew omits three kings between Joram and Uzziah (Ozias). As regards the pretended confusion through the term Ozias, there is not a shadow of ground for it. In the list in Chronicles there is no kind of similarity in the names.
Matthew makes Joseph take the young child and His mother into Egypt. Luke makes them return to Nazareth in Galilee, when they had presented Him in the Temple. Note, there is nothing to prove the same time. The magi may have come
later as is probable, for Herod killed from two years and under, according to the time he had diligently (accurately) enquired -- this, or Luke's usual passing over events and time.
As to Matthew's and Luke's account of the birth of the Lord -- first, in the brief accounts given, we find nothing but what bears on particular points which the Holy Ghost had in view. There is nothing more opposite to the intention of the Gospels than what is called a harmony. They treat different characters of Christ, and what bears on that is given, and all give a very small part indeed of His history. This produces difficulties which are attached to our ignorance of a multitude of connecting links. Often facts having the same moral bearing are put together, especially in Luke, with entire indifference as to date. The moral point is all that is sought. That the event happened before or after, is all one, nay, the historical order is neglected to maintain the moral, or distant events linked together without notice of interval, if bearing morally one on another. This is the general method of Luke, and is invaluable for our instruction. In reading the account in Luke's Gospel of the interval between the ascension and the resurrection, an unbeliever would at once take it for continuing, and that the leading out to Bethany was the day of His resurrection, and the ignorance of Luke, and the absence of inspiration proved by the contradiction of other Gospels. Now, in this case, we have the proof of the contrary at hand. Luke knew perfectly, if we look at him as a human writer, that there was an interval, and so true is this that he is the only one who gives the fact that forty days elapsed before the Saviour left the earth. But the simple truth is, this was not the Spirit's object in the Gospel -- it was in the Acts. But we learn here that such a bringing of events together proves nothing of what it is alleged to prove.
Now, as to the passages in question. There is no proof whatever that it was at the time of His birth that Jesus was found of the magi. He had been born at Bethlehem. It is evident that at the time of His birth the star appeared, for Herod had enquired of the wise men the time. The star had disappeared (it is generally supposed it led them -- this is a mistake, for they rejoiced greatly when they saw it again). What time elapsed before they set out, no one knows. Time was spent, clearly, in their journey from the East; and Herod, who had exactly enquired of them, slays all "from two years
old and under." No doubt he would make assurance doubly sure -- still "all from two years old and under." If there was only a month run out, or not, even that seems out of measure: so that nothing would show that they were not returned to Bethlehem at some feast. The only argument alleged is the enquiry where He should be born, but this merely is the natural enquiry on having seen His nascent star, and they would seek Him at His own city; so that He might have been in Galilee and come back. And note here, I have nothing to do with proving this to be true, but merely that it is possible, because, if it is possible, there is no contradiction; if any supposition renders possible that the two accounts subsist, there is evidently no contradiction, for they may in that case have both been true. It is important to remember this. The infidel argument is not that it was not so, but that it could not be so. Now if I prove it could, the argument of the infidel is good for nothing. Now it is clear that Jesus could have gone into Galilee and come back. The "When Jesus was born," in our English translation, is nothing -- it is literally, "Jesus having been born."
But the truth is, while I see no proof whatever that the visit of the magi was immediate, yet from the universal character of Luke's Gospel, I am disposed to consider probable that all the account of Matthew is left out as not to his purpose, and that when he has shown the accomplishment of the Law in the Temple, he passes over at once to the moral continuation of Jesus' life, without touching on what referred to His position as Jewish King and taking the place of all Israel. When the ordinances were accomplished in the temple, the youth of Jesus begins in Galilee. The royal flight into Egypt had nothing to do with this -- it was a parenthesis in His moral history. We have a case exactly analogous in Luke 4:13, 14. All John 2 and 3, come in between. But this was not the Holy Ghost's subject in Luke. The proof is found in Mark 1:14, and John 3:24. Biography is not a gospel. In each Gospel is the mighty and unfailing purpose of the Spirit of God.
Already in the first two chapters we have the position of the Lord characterising all the Gospel -- Son of David and Abraham, for the promises, but Jehovah the Saviour, Emmanuel, but, a Root out of a dry ground, going to Nazareth and a Nazarene;
expected in the world where a star appears, but hated and rejected of Israel, and called out of Egypt to begin afresh; His personal position in Israel, and then the general relationship.
-- 16. Note there is no revelation of an object to Jesus for His faith, when He begins His ministry or public life before God. He receives power as Man (anointed with the Holy Ghost and with power) the testimony to Him giving the consciousness of being the Object of the Father's delight, or at least the public witness to that of which He was conscious; Luke 2:49. The testimony was afforded that He was the Object, but no object was presented to Him. He saw the Holy Ghost descending on Him, as did John; and He knew of the voice; John 5:37. This is a characteristic difference between the Lord's faith and ours. He was witness of, and leaned on, His Father, but we have an object of faith in Him, which occupies and sustains us. His was communion and dependence, ours objective withal, and we need it. He spake what He knew and testified what He had seen (it is what we needed) but it was not a Paul at Damascus, nor a Stephen stoned, nor the twelve accompanying Him as far as Bethany. Whatever association Jesus may put Himself in with us, He has ever His own place. How perfect is it!
I connect verses 16, 17, and John 15:26, in that we see the Trinity in their respective places in the divine dealings in grace in both; Christianity now, and so far as in Christ personally here -- there heaven is opened to Christ when He takes His place among the Remnant, i.e., men wrought in by God. The Holy Ghost descends on Him as Man. He is sealed and anointed, and the Father's voice owns Him Son in whom He is well pleased. There He stood alone. But the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, are all revealed, each in their respective place. But He, on whom the Holy Ghost descended and abode, was to baptise with the Holy Ghost. Then we get a new order in this economy of grace. In Matthew, the Son is below as Man, to form man's place in His own Person, not only being Son, but the Father revealed as owning Him, as such, as Man down here, and Man in His Person sealed and anointed -- Man with the heavens opened to Him down here, owned of and connected with them. In John 15, the Holy
Ghost comes down, sent by the glorified Man in heaven, to dwell in those who believe, by Him who has all power in heaven and earth to reveal, the whole truth of that glory, and where it put man in and out of Christ, the world, and who was its prince, and the Head of the new order and place of man as the fruit of redemption. The Holy Ghost is sent by the glorified Man, the Son. He is the glorified Man, and the Head of economical authority. But He sends Him from the Father. It is not a kind of independent thing, though now the glorified Man, as ever in John -- the Father has His own blessed place. The Holy Ghost is sent by Christ -- a wonderful place for man! The Holy Ghost, so to speak, takes up the service part, but from the Father -- He comes or goes forth from the Father. So, connecting us with Him, He testifies of Christ in this place, but we are in immediate association with the Father. He not only is sent from the Father (para tou patros) but He goes forth (ekporeuetai) from the Father, i.e., besides the economical authority of Christ, we have immediate fellowship with the Father through the Holy Ghost as come from Him. Sending from the Father is Christ's place -- a wonderful place! But His going forth from the Father is connected with the Father Himself. It is the glorified Christ, and He is the Truth. So the Spirit, so coming, is the Spirit of truth, and is even said to be the Truth. Men, though informed by the Holy Ghost (John 14) were the personal witnesses of what Christ was down here -- a human picture, though divinely given -- but the Holy Ghost Himself carries on the service of revealing Christ in glory, as so sent by Him to make Him known; but then this puts us in immediate relationship with the Father. With this we must connect John 1:33, and Acts 2:3, and John 7:39.
We may note that it is His public position as Son, not His birth -- He is publicly owned -- such is His place. The principle of humble but perfect and simple obedience, which follows in the Temptation, is only so much the more remarkable.
I find great beauty and instruction in the connection of the end of this chapter and the beginning of chapter 4. The Lord takes His place with His people, the Remnant then of Israel under the influence of grace, though He stands alone in the present realisation in both cases of the consequence. They, under that influence, go to John, and, though of course He needed no repentance, in Him it was fulfilling righteousness, like John's ministry, as He says, in lowliness, "It becometh us."
Yet in that first right step He goes with them; as soon as He takes this place heaven is opened, the Holy Ghost descends on Him, the perfectly applicable Man, and the Father's voice owns Him as the Son in whom He is well pleased. Man, though only then in His Person, is brought into that place. It is His place as Man before God -- that into which He brings us; though, for that, redemption must come in. No doubt we shall have it fully in heaven; but this is the position man is brought into, and brought into on earth, manifested in Him before God even His Father. Then He, and still all alone, to deliver us, as all alone there in this place before God, takes our place (at least the place we are brought into when associated with Him) in respect of conflict in this world with the power of evil; only He had to begin and accomplish the work Himself. Still it is the conflict in which we have to overcome, and in the same way. In both respects with God (Father) and with Satan, He takes the place as Man, only perfect, into which we are brought, and in which we have to walk and act. This is most lovely and precious.
But besides Christ's standing as the Model of blessing in man, and there overcoming for us, we have, through His taking His place as Man, a full revelation of the Trinity, and that in, and in connection with, man through Christ's becoming one, and His being perfect. He was the Son, the Holy Ghost descends and abides on Him, and the Father's voice then must make itself heard, owning this Man to be His own beloved Son. This is a wonderful development of the counsels of God, and of grace in counsel.
The testimony of John the baptist I have not sufficiently noticed. The general testimony is known -- repentance, for the Kingdom of heaven was at hand, and they were baptised, confessing their sins. The spurious righteousness of the Pharisees, and the selfish infidelity of the Sadducees, are alike utterly rejected. God must have realities; all repent, fruits showing the reality. The plea of privilege by descent disowned, however true -- the individual state was in question; for God was coming to deal with souls and His vineyard. Sovereign grace withal belonged to Him. He could of stones make real children of Abraham. The axe withal was laid to the root of the trees. It was not warning and forbearance -- the time of divine dealing was come. Judgment was there at the door. If a tree did not bear good fruit, it was to be hewn down and cast into the fire. This was
individual. But then comes in the revelation of Him that was to judge, the Person whom John preceded; he baptised with water to repentance, but One mightier was coming, He would baptise with the Holy Ghost. This was blessing and liberty, the promise of joy fulfilled, but also, with judgment, sifting, and purifying if true life was there, everlasting punishment if only evil; but, in general, judgment. Power and joy, and judgment. Further, there was that which was not individual; He was going thoroughly to purge His floor, the Jewish floor, gather the wheat, the true Remnant, into His garner -- at the time into the Church down here, but really the heavenly garner(the 'here' being temporary, and the calling heavenly) finally in every sense so, and the chaff utterly and finally judged, the difference completely and finally made.
Privilege, trial, in obedience (according to that place), service, and then others called to serve; but here absolute, essential perfection in all. And, in the call, nothing dependent on previous qualification according to man: "Follow me, and I will make you," etc. (verse 19 was the secret of this service and calling. So, "They followed him"; compare John 12:26.
-- 13. Compare Luke 5 and Mark 1. It is to be remarked that Jesus, having left Nazareth, came to dwell at Capernaum, and the four disciples already knew Him from John's baptism and heeded His word. The Lord's walking by the sea was no unusual thing. It is also to be remarked that in Mark the call is before His going into the synagogue, and healing Simon's wife's mother -- in Luke, the miraculous draught is after, though, in general, they have the same order of events. The circumstances are quite different. In Luke, the Lord was sitting in the ship after teaching the multitude out of it. Matthew's and Mark's object, and the Holy Ghost's there, was only to give the broad fact itself, that the four disciples left their business of fishing at that time, and followed Jesus in His labour and ministry, which He began at that time formally in Capernaum. I suppose then that Jesus, dwelling at that time at Capernaum, walked by the seaside when they were actually fishing, two of them, the others mending their nets, and that He called them, and they left their nets and followed Him. After this, He went into the synagogue and
taught, cast out the demon, went into Simon's house and healed his mother. After this, very likely when He had been preaching some time about Galilee, the multitude were pressing on Him to hear the Word, and He entered into Simon's ship, and told him to thrust out from the shore, and then happened what is related in Luke, and they finally and wholly left all, and wholly attached themselves to Him in His ministry, and did nothing else. In Luke, the account is after preaching in other towns around.
The manner in which the attraction of multitudes gives occasion to the exposition of the principles of the Kingdom is remarkable; and how profoundly new in Israel must that instruction have been! And, as they said, what a character of authority it carries with it! And I add now, does inspiration in the communication of it shine through it! Yet after all, however sweet and perfect are the instructions of the Lord, and surely they are, still it is Himself that has the real attractive power, and which commands the soul.
With this chapter compare Deuteronomy 14 and Galatians 3.
-- 12. This verse shows clearly, I think, a heavenly place held out (and in connection with the coming Kingdom) when the Church is not yet thought of, for so verses 17, 18, look to the change of dispensation from O-lam ha-zeh (the present age) to O-lam ha-ba (the age to come) not having yet come. But it is a new position, as waiting for it, the Remnant -- disciples as distinct from the multitude. But then the Kingdom of heaven is looked on as carrying the true character of God's children, as revealed in Christ, with it. This is the revelation of it -- what suits the Kingdom. Nor is the result in power yet come in (verses 45-48) but the revelation of the Father's name, through the Son's being there, is very striking. But it is connected with goodness, and secret communion, or prayer at least.
The prayer taught the disciples by the Lord, is clearly the prayer of the Remnant, but it is not for the Kingdom of the Son of David as such, and supposes, like the Beatitudes, heaven. The Father's kingdom is looked for, which is the heavenly part spoken of in chapter 13, the earthly part being called the
Kingdom of the Son of man. It is to be remarked, it is all for the wants of him who prays, and those in like position, as associated in the same place -- "Our," no individuality, and no intercession, nor in this the love and power of the Spirit, but common wants, of course perfect in the expression of them. They are contrasted with the Gentiles. But these are everlasting principles of righteousness, not in merely dispensational questions. God's righteousness, not here justifying, but moral principles accordant with His nature.
It is also worthy of note, that though the Father is addressed in heaven, yet the petitions in the Lord's prayer refer all to earth. The desires are holy; the utmost desire is that the Father's Kingdom may come. Heavenly influence owned, a heavenly Father's Name hallowed, but no heavenly hope. Heaven is looked to to bring its influence on earth, to give it its character, but no taking man up there (the doxology has no fit sense). It is assumed that God's will is done, and perfectly, in heaven, and it is desired that it may be so on earth. It allies itself perfectly to chapter 24. It is the time evil is in the world (not Adam in Paradise, even in thought), but the desire that it may be gone out of it. Luke is more personal: Father, hallowed be Thy name; Thy kingdom come; give us our needed food for each day; and forgive us our sins, for we forgive every one indebted to us; and lead us not into temptation. This is personal, as to the Father, and personal need as to us, not a Remnant dispensational thing as Matthew ever. We have His name hallowed (in the personal relationship) His kingdom to come, then for us our personal daily wants met, forgiveness for we forgive, and avoiding being tested by God -- a terrible thing, used where humbling and self-knowledge are needed. That is all.
-- 6. This is a very remarkable passage. It is not the largeness and universality of the Gospel, yet always to be observed. There is no reference to the Holy Ghost here, no asking for it; but judgment is in verse 19.
-- 19. This verse shows the Lord's words to be preparatory to another state of things, as, indeed, verse 20, too.
-- 24, et seq. Doing is the rock here. There is therefore that which is intrinsic, as entering into that which God is
setting up -- the state of man's heart with God, or in itself rather as seen of Him.
The Father is referred to, but the child is on earth, and no question of the Holy Ghost, or Christ at God's right hand, but the Father's kingdom is referred to as coming, and some of them being in heaven; all associated with God revealed fully to the soul, but not the Holy Ghost, nor a rent veil. And if some may be in heaven, the earth is to be inherited. Purity of heart, and goodness without motive, but reference of heart to a Father, and derived from Him. It is perfectly clear that what is said of the Law has nothing to do with our fulfilling it. It is its authority, like the Prophets, whatsoever it said was to be made good, not set aside. Christ did not come setting up another system which condemned that, but made it good, and all it said would be made good in one way or another; but it supposes its passing away when it was fulfilled, and another system, the Kingdom of heaven, set up. Only the principles announced are generally eternal, as connected with man as he ought to be before God, or God's original institutions, though much applies to Israel's then state, passing into the Kingdom, but that which is yet to come.
In this chapter we have Christ's Person, and in chapter 9, His principles of grace. So, in chapter 11, we have His Person rejected in Israel, as John's, but set up as Son of God who alone could give rest, and in chapter 12, being such, and so setting aside Jewish legalism, it becomes the rejection of Israel. In fact (chapter 11) His rejection opens out grace in His Person. Chapter 12 is in judgment on the nation, but this on the blasphemy of the Spirit. But in chapter 12 He is Son of man; in chapter 11 He is Son of God. Yet He is greater than the Temple in chapter 12. Chapters 8-12 complete the Gospel properly speaking. Chapters 14 and 15 are actual dealings with Israel, according to the principles previously shown. Chapter 13 was His real service -- sowing, not fruit-seeking, and the Kingdom as it is. Chapter 17 is in the glory.
-- 1-13. Though this be divine, and the second part go beyond the limits of Judaism, it does not go beyond the Kingdom. And note, here we have authority for regarding the coming Kingdom as the Kingdom of heaven, though
developed into the Kingdom of the Father, and of the Son of man as the heavenly and earthly part.
-- 2. The Lord shows Himself above the Law in grace, in touching the leper; according to the Law, He would have been defiled in doing it.
-- 6, et seq. This grace extends itself to the Gentiles, where there is faith.
-- 11. The general truth in this verse is clear -- the admission of the Gentiles into the Kingdom of heaven, and the exclusion of the Jews. But the question arises how and when are Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob seen in the Kingdom. We must compare Luke 13:28, 29, which is more general.
-- 14. He is still in the midst of the Jews sympathising with them, and bearing their infirmities.
-- 19, et seq. He is in the lowest place on the earth, and in order to follow Him there, one has to abandon all alike. He is the Lord who disposes of winds and sea. The end of the chapter shows the condition of the Jews in contrast with the Remnant.
We have here, before the historical dealings with Israel, an introductory display of the power come in, and its effect. It was Jehovah cleansing the leper or leprosy in Israel, and sending the cleansed one to the priests. It was, since it was Jehovah, that which reached over, in power, the limits of Israel, and showed that, while Gentiles would come in from East and West, the children of the Kingdom would be thrust out. Next, He was come down in gracious participation in all their sorrows and infirmities, but hence, withal, having no place amongst men, but in the midst of the tossings and heavings through which those, who were content to identify themselves with this rejected One for His own sake, must pass. They were secure by that very fact in all being in the same boat with Him who was there in divine power and counsels, however low He might be come. This was the place of the Remnant. As to the nations, they would turn Him away, but Israel, left to the power of Satan would rush, as unclean, headlong into destruction. Such is the whole history of the coming of Messiah, Jehovah Jesus. Note here we have not the man sent back to tell of the power which had healed him, for it is the ministry of the Lord which is pointed out, and its course, reception, and effect. Hence this is the moral connection of these events, in order to present the moral history of the
Lord's presenting Himself. In Mark 4:35, we have the historical time of it, I apprehend. This chapter is therefore in a certain sense complete in itself.
We have then, in this chapter, very distinctly, first the power in which Jesus was present in Israel as Jehovah Messiah, reaching out to Gentiles, and, rejected, leading to rejection of the children of the Kingdom, and this presence in grace and kindness to all their sorrows. Next, the position in which this rejection would place those who would follow Him -- He seeming to neglect them too, but in truth secured by His security as associated with them. Next, the power of Satan nullified by a word, but the effect on Israel as rejecting Him (in the swine) and the quiet influence of Satan by the spirit of the world depriving them for ever of His presence.
In this chapter it is grace -- forgiveness, and reception of sinners made good by power. The result is then taught as to the nation, individual faith, final deliverance, when all was over as to nature. Then, the character of His sight and speech giving power to Israel -- and the result in the Pharisees -- in the patience of grace. Chapter 8 is more external, this more internal. However He is the Messiah and Jehovah who pardons and who heals upon earth. He was come in grace. He was there in mercy -- a Source of joy as the Bridegroom with His friends, but who was going to be taken away from them, and the new things could not suit the old. But He gave life, and meantime those who had faith found it already. He gives sight to the blind, as Son of David to Israel, and, acting in grace, He again passes over the blasphemies of the Pharisees. But the mission of His disciples is a final testing of Israel. The nature of His presence is fully discussed and set forth.
In this chapter we have (as in chapter 8, the Person so acting) the ways of the Lord in Israel, acting in grace as above all sin, forgiveness and healing according to Psalm 103. Then His coming down in goodness to sinners, not requiring them to come up to God in light but coming out to them where they were. But here, note, the veil is yet unrent. The Law required from man what man's conduct ought to be, if he was to subsist as man even on earth in divine acceptance and favour; redemption and the death of Christ rends the veil,
and puts away sin for God's presence, and enables us to enter into the holiest by the new and living way, through the veil, but we have to walk in the light as God is in the light, and wrath from heaven is revealed against the whole state of man, enmity against God; sin takes its true character as opposed to God's nature, as the breach of His Law in its acts. The true light now shines. But Christ as alive on earth, and present in Israel, was neither of them exactly. The veil was not rent, nor did He come requiring anything in man as Law rightly did. He veiled His divine glory in flesh, but was Light in the world, and was Love. But it was not God remaining hidden behind the veil where man could not come, but God come down to man in goodness, requiring nothing, but, as above sin, bringing goodness to man in it, and proving by mercy and power to man, under its effects in government, that He was there who could forgive the cause of it too. The Son of man could forgive sins. God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them. Still the veil unrent hid God come in grace -- hiding Godhead in humiliation to bring grace to sinners. He brings goodness to man, requires nothing. But this, in the power of that which He was bringing in, could not be put in the old bottles of the Law, or of human nature fitting itself for God -- ordinances to quiet a troubled conscience, and eke out man's want of intrinsic righteousness. New wine must be put in new bottles. Christianity must be itself. The Bridegroom was there, looking at Messiahship. But besides that, the incoming power could not be attached to the old system -- one was trying and ekeing out man, the other revealing God. Next, the Lord was coming really, when He restored it, to find Israel dead. But they were not accounted dead till they had put Christ to death. But He had to bring them really to life by divine power. But, as to dealings on the way, and whoever touched the hem of His garment was made whole, when all human means could not hinder the progress towards death, virtue, divine power, went out of Him. The effect is eyes to the blind to see, the deaf ear unstopped, the dumb mouth opened, the devil's power gone. This brings out the blasphemy of the Pharisees, that He casts out devils by Beelzebub; but judgment is not what we have here (as in chapter 12), but grace, and He, only as seeing the multitude scattered as sheep without a shepherd, is moved with compassion towards them, and the harvest is
plenteous, the labourers few. The effect of the perception of evil, and the evil estate, say of the Church (then of Israel) is only to show that grace which is above the evil, for that is what we see here -- grace in every case above the evil. And you cannot get a state of things which grace, the grace that is in Christ, is not suited to, and, note, which in grace does not draw out the gracious consideration, and grace in power suited to the need. This is very gracious and very precious. Remark how complete the statement is, and how the grace is above all the evil, for all this is grace.
32-39. There is an instructive testimony here to the Lord's ways. The Pharisees attribute the Lord's miracles to Beelzebub, as in chapter 12, but here, instead of telling the end of the nation in judgment, He goes on through the cities and villages, and, seeing the multitude, is moved with compassion, and even sends out His disciples to call to repentance. The evil, the same evil, the one not to be pardoned, was there, but there was still room for the operation of grace, and, while this can have place, He moves on in the sense of man's need (Mark) and His own love. The point of departure is from Himself in service, and while the door is open, His heart is, and moved only by the desolation in which He sees the multitude, through their chiefs' evil. This is instruction for us in these last days. Yea! even when He pronounces judgment, He continues in sovereign goodness, though then bringing out the evil, and ground of judgment, controversially, and showing what was to replace His present rejected service. But here the state of things draws out His love, quod nota.
The distinction at verses 15, 16, is plainer than ever to me. To the end of verse 15, it is the presence of Emmanuel upon earth, disposing of everything on earth for those He sends out; compare Luke 22:35-37. From verse 16 the Lord is away, and they are left to the effects of the Cross themselves. In the first fifteen verses we have a divine Person dealing in grace with the Remnant in Israel -- seeking them; afterwards, the Spirit with sheep among wolves -- hostile, Gentile rulers -- three against two, and two against three in one house -- hated of all men, and enduring to the end, but cared for, and that by their Father, and not to fear. In the first part, Emmanuel givesTHE SERMON ON THE MOUNT AND THE KINGDOM
THE SPIRIT'S WORK
FRAGMENTS
THE SOUL
SACRAMENTS
REMARKS ON AN "ESSAY IN AID OF A GRAMMAR OF ASSENT" +
CORINTHIANS AND PHILIPPIANS
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