SIR ROBERT ANDERSON
Secret Service
Theologian
THE HONOUR OF
HIS NAME
Chapter Six
IN considering the use of the simple name in the Acts of
the Apostles, the place and purpose of that book in the sacred Canon claims
attention. And this is a matter of far-reaching importance. For no one who
understands the ground-plan of the Bible can miss what Pusey calls its "hidden
harmony." And knowledge of this will give complete immunity from the attacks of
the sham Higher Criticism.
The Bible has both an outward and a spiritual
aspect. Christ is the burden of its esoteric teaching, while on its outward
side it relates mainly to the covenant people. A brief preface of eleven
chapters contains all that it gives us about the world's history for thousands
of years before the call of Abraham; and the story of Abraham's descendants
monopolises the rest of the Old Testament. For it is only in relation to Israel
that Gentile Powers ever come upon the scene.
To Abraham was given the
promise of earthly blessing, and to David the promise of earthly sovereignty;
the Mosaic revelation being the unfolding and the complement of the Abrahamic
covenant. And the New Testament opens with the birth of Christ as son of David
and Son of Abraham - of Him with whom rests the fulfilment of all the Old
Testament promises and covenants. The Gospels tell the story of His life and
death - His Ministry, and His rejection by the favoured people. And the Acts
gives the records of a dispensation during which that people, notwithstanding
their apostasy and guilt, received the offer of Divine pardon on the ground of
grace. We are apt to misread the book if we fail to recognise the special
mission and ministry to the children of Israel, which were committed to the
Apostle Paul. And because of that commission it was that he gave his testimony
first to the Jews, in every place he visited, not excepting Rome, although a
Christian Church had already been gathered there. And this explains why it is
that the Book of Acts ends abruptly by recording the rejection of the gospel by
the Jews of Rome, the last two verses containing all that is told us of his two
years' ministry in the Imperial city. It explains also why not a word is added
about his ministry after his release from his first imprisonment. For the book
is not the early history of Christianity, but the history, divinely given, of
the Pentecostal dispensation, during which Israel enjoyed a priority in the
proclamation of the gospel.
And when we recognise both the purpose and the
historical character of Acts, we are prepared to find that here, as in the
Gospels, the Lord is named in the narrative by His personal name. And yet such
occurrences are limited to seven. The first is in the opening sentence of the
book. The second is in verse 14, and the third is found in the concluding words
of verse 16, which clearly belong to the parenthesis that ends with the 19th
verse. The supposition is grotesque, that when the Apostle Peter mentioned
Judas, in addressing his brethren a few days after the Crucifixion, he needed
to explain that the Judas to whom he referred was the traitor of that name!
The other passages in Acts where the Lord is narratively named as "Jesus" will
be found in chapters vii. 55; viii. 35; xviii. 18; and xxviii. 23. Chapter ix.
27 should perhaps be included in the list. And if we follow the Revisers, we
shall.add the 20th verse of that chapter, and also chapter xviii. 25. It is
noteworthy that the Lord was thus named by the heavenly messengers who appeared
to the disciples after the Ascension (i. 11). Far more noteworthy is it, that
in every instance where the record contains words spoken by unbelievers, the
Lord is only "Jesus."
The narrative of Stephen's martyrdom has a unique
interest. "Being full of the Holy Ghost, he looked up stedfastly into heaven,
and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God, and
said, Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing on the
right hand of God." Here only is the title "Son of Man" used of the Lord by
human lips. "And why here?" Dean Alford asks; and the following is the answer
he gives: "Stephen, full of the Holy Ghost, and speaking not of himself at all,
but entirely by the utterance of the Spirit, repeats the very words in which
(the Lord) Jesus Himself, before this same Council, had foretold His
glorification" (Matt. xxvi. 64). Christians are apt to treat this phrase as
merely an orientalism for "man." But, as the Book of Daniel teaches us, it was
a Divine title. And that the Jews so regarded it is clear; for the Lord's
assumption of it when before the Council led - them all to exclaim, "Art thou
then the Son of God?" (Luke xxii. 69, 70). It is never used in Scripture in
connection with the Incarnation. As man He was born in Bethlehem; but as Son of
Man He "descended out of heaven."
One word more: that Stephen saw "Jesus"
at the right hand of God, the divine narrative records. But "Lord Jesus,
receive my spirit" was his dying prayer. "0 Jesus" would presumably be the
language of not a few of our hymn writers.
Chapter Seven
In
considering the use of "the simple name" in the passages in Acts where the
Apostles Peter and Paul are reported to have used it, admits of the same
explanation as its use in the Epistle to the Hebrews. Their purpose was to
emphasise the Lord's humiliation and rejection. Very clearly does this appear
in chapter xiii. 33 - the only occasion when the Lord was thus named by the
Apostle Paul. The intelligent reader can see that if, in addressing Jews, he
had used any other name or title, his words would have lost all their special
force. And this is equally clear in Peter's use of it, as recorded in chapter
ii. 32, 36, and v. 30. Following the R.V. reading, we exclude four texts which
in the A.V. seem to fall within the same category, namely, chapters iii. 13,
26; and iv. 27, 30. For the holy Servant of Jehovah is one of the Lord's Old
Testament titles, connoting Deity. And it is a striking fact that this aspect
of the ministry of Christ characterises the Gospel of Mark, with which the
Apostle Peter is believed to have been in a special way associated.
Though
the use of the name by the Lord Himself has no bearing on the subject here in
view, we must not pass it by unnoticed. The name of "Jesus the Crucified" it
was that fired the hate of Paul the persecutor, and that was the name he heard
from the blinding glory of the heavenly vision by which he was arrested on his
evil mission to Damascus: "I am Jesus whom thou persecutest." And from that
hour the truth was burned into his soul that they had "crucified the Lord of
Glory!
IN the thirteen Epistles which are acknowledged to be the writings
of the Apostle of the Gentiles, there are but eight passages in which "the
simple name" occurs; and eight times he uses it in the Epistle to the Hebrews.
This branch of our inquiry is of exceptional interest, for the Apostle Paul's
use of the name is pregnant with doctrinal teaching. Hebrews is written in the
language of Old Testament typology; and to appreciate the significance of "the
simple name" in that Epistle we need to understand this.
But to introduce a
treatise on that great subject here would be impracticable ' and the following
sentence from the passage already quoted from Ellicott's Commentary must
suffice: "In the Epistle to the Hebrews, where, in accordance with one main
purpose of the Epistle, this usage is least rare (see chaps. ii. 9; vi. 20;
vii. 22; xii. 2, 24; xiii. 12), it will be found that in all cases either
special stress is laid on the lowly and suffering humanity of the Lord, or the
historic facts of His Ministry on earth are referred to." What has been already
said of the use of the name in the First Epistle of John1 applies equally to
such passages as Romans iii. 26. And in chapter viii. 11, the only other
passage in Romans where "the simple name" occurs, its significance is equally
plain. "If the Spirit of Him who raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He
that raised up (the) Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal
bodies." To quote Ellicott's Commentary again, "the 'raising up of Jesus is the
historical resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth: the 'raising up of the Christ'
points to the mysterious effect of that resurrection on those for whom He is
the Mediator."
A similar explanation suggests itself in regard to the use
of the name in the fourth chapter of 2 Corinthians. The intelligent reader will
not fail to mark the emphatic contrast between "Jesus" and "the Lord Jesus" in
the passage. "The life of Jesus" would mean the life which the Lord lived on
earth, whereas the vital principle which He shares with His people would, in
Scriptural language, be "the life of Christ."
The Revisers' reading of
Galatians vi. 17 exemplifies the interest and importance of the present
inquiry. Their devotion to the three oldest MSS. - the layman's usual blunder
of giving undue weight to "direct" evidence - has led them to destroy the
meaning of the text. "The stigmata of Jesus" would mean that (as in the case of
the fabled miracle of St. Francis of Assisi) the Apostle's body was marked by
wound-prints identical with those which the Lord bore after His crucifixion. Is
it credible that the Apostle could have made such a statement? The meaning of
the words he actually used is not doubtful. It was a practice with slave-owners
to brand their slaves, and the scars of his wounds received in his ministry for
Christ were to him "the stigmata of the Lord Jesus "-the brandmarks by which
his divine Master claimed him as His devoted slave. In the Apostle Paul's six
later Epistles, written during his Roman imprisonments, the name occurs but
twice; and apart altogether from our present purpose the passages are full of
interest. I refer to Ephesians iv. 21 and Philippians ii. 10.
To the
Ephesians he wrote, "Ye did not so learn Christ; if so be that ye heard Him and
were taught in Him, even as truth is in Jesus." "The truth as it is in Jesus"
is a popular but unscriptural synonym for "Evangelical truth." In Scriptural
language that would be called "the truth of Christ." But the exhortation here
relates not to doctrine but to practice. It is that the Christian life should
be the reflex of the truth as manifested by the life of our divine Lord in the
days of His humiliation. Hence the words "as truth is in Jesus." Some would
tell us that in Phiippians ii. 10, "Jesus" is the name of the Lord's
exaltation. And in proof of this they appeal to the Angel's words in announcing
it as the divinely chosen name of His humiliation. But this is quite untenable,
and it destroys not only the force, but the meaning, of the passage. "Jesus"
was His birth name; for even in His humilation He was the Saviour. But here we
have the name which was given to Him in His glory, and because of His death
upon the Cross. And it is not in relation to His work as the Saviour of sinners
that the Cross is mentioned here; but, incidentally as the crowning display of
the world's contemptuous rejection of Him, and chiefly and emphatically as the
climax of His humiliation. And it is because of His self-surrender, His
self-abasement, if we may venture to use the word, that God has highly exalted
Him and given Him "the name that is above every name."
And what can that
name be but "the awful name" Jehovah.' But it is in the name of Jesus that
every knee shall bow. It is a matter of course that all shall fall prostrate in
the presence of that glory before which even the beloved disciple fell as dead.
But, as this passage tells us, their homage shall be rendered with the
realisation that the God whom they are worshipping is the "Jesus" whose deity
the unbeliever now denies, or acknowledges only with feigned words in the
recital of a creed. It is not, as the Christianised rationalists profanely
teach, that He has supplanted Israel's "cruel Jehovah," but that He is the
manifestation of the God of the Old Testament. And being "the effulgence of His
glory and the express image of His substance," He is the only God the world
shall ever know.
And every tongue shall then confess that He is Lord, a
confession by which the disciple declared himself in the days of His
humiliation, and which ought to characterise the Christian in this time of His
absence. Hence we read in the tenth chapter of Romans that, in contrast with
"the righteousness of the law," which consisted in doing, "the righteousness
which is of faith speaketh on this wise. . . . that if thou shalt confess with
thy mouth Jesus as Lord, and shalt believe in thine heart that God raised Him
from the dead, thou shalt be saved."
And this again reminds us of yet
another striking passage of similar import. In 1 Corinthians xii. 3 the Apostle
"gives us to understand "-how few there are who do understand it !-" that no
one can say 'Lord Jesus' save by the Holy Spirit." Any one, of course, can
pronounce the words-a parrot could be taught to do so-but do we ever hear them
from the lips of the unconverted? With them He is "Jesus" or "the Saviour" or
"Jesus Christ" (for that is too often used as merely "a double name") but never
"the Lord Jesus," or "the Lord Jesus Christ."
The fourth chapter of 1
Thessalonians claims special notice in this connection. "Words are the index of
thoughts," Dean Alford writes, "and where an unusual construction is found, it
points to some special reason in the mind of the writer for using it." But in
the closing verses of this chapter our translators give us what they suppose
the Apostle meant, and not what he actually wrote. And thus they make the words
of verse 14, translated "those which sleep in Jesus," to be merely a poetical
equivalent for "the dead in Christ" of the 16th verse. The phrase "sleeping in
Jesus" is so enshrined in Christian thought that to call it unscriptural seems
almost to savour of sacrilege. And yet it robs us of the deep and important
teaching of this wonderful passage. A strictly accurate rendering of the
Apostle's words would be, "those who have been put to sleep by (or through)
Jesus will God bring with Him." And the explanation of this seemingly strange
statement is to be found in the circumstances which led the Apostle to write
this letter. Who are these sleeping ones? And what was it that caused their
death? In the answer to these questions will be found the explanation of the
passage; and that answer may be gleaned from the middle chapters of the
Epistle.
We learn from Acts xvii. that very shortly after the Apostle
reached Berea from Thessalonica, the persecuting Jews drove him out, and he
fled to Athens. His stay in Athens was still more brief than in Berea; and yet
before leaving for Corinth he received tidings which raised fears lest his
labour in Thessalonica had been in vain (ch. iii. 5). Thereupon be commissioned
Timothy to return at once to Thessalonica, and Timothy's report, which reached
him in Corinth, led him to write the present Epistle. That in the few months
since the Apostle had been with them, there should have been a number of deaths
in such a small community as the Thessalonian converts, would have been
strange; but it is incredible that any deaths from natural causes should have
shaken the faith of Christians of the type described in chapter i. It is clear
that what tried their faith was not the fact of these deaths, but the manner of
them, and the circumstances in which they occurred.
And the Epistle plainly
indicates that they were the result of a storm of persecution that had burst
upon them. In a word, some of their leaders had been martyred. But had they not
been told that the Lord had "all power in heaven and on earth," and would never
forsake His people? How was it then that they were left a prey to their
enemies? Either the teaching was erroneous, or else their lost ones had fallen
under divine displeasure. And so they were sorrowing "even as others that have
no hope." Accordingly they are reminded that the Lord Jesus had Himself been
killed by their common enemy (ch. ii. 15), and that the Apostle, when with
them, had warned them to expect tribulations such as they were then suffering
(ch. iii. 4). And finally he gives them a definite message of hope, received
directly from the Lord for their comfort. This, he declares, "we are saying to
you in the word of the Lord." It is one of those specially definite revelations
(like 1 Cor. xi. 23 and xv. 3) which the Apostle received in some peculiarly
distinctive manner.
"The dead in Christ" of the 16th verse are the holy
dead in general; but "the sleeping ones" of verses 13 and 14 are the particular
individuals whose death they were mourning. And as it was for His name's sake
that they had suffered, the Lord speaks of them as having been put to sleep by
Himself. It is as though He said, "True, I was the cause of their death, but
yet I have not failed them. Was not I Myself put to death? And as surely as I
died and rose again they too shall rise, and God will bring them with Me at My
Coming." And the infinite tenderness and grace of this are intensified by the
fact that the message of comfort and hope is given in the name of His
humiliation - the name under which He Himself was crucified and slain! It is
His first recorded message to His suffering saints on earth, after His
Ascension. And in that same name He gave His final message - we have it on the
closing page of Holy Scripture:-" I JESUS am the bright and morning star. . . .
Surely I am coming quickly." And let us make the response which the Divine
Spirit puts into our lips, "Even so, come, Lord Jesus." He addresses His people
in the name of His humiliation, but He expects them to respond by according Him
the name of His glory.
Chapter Eight
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