LECTURE
V.
THE MANNER OF ENTRANCE INTO THE
RELATION;
ADOPTION AS CONNECTED WITH REGENERATION AND
JUSTIFICATION.
"But as many as received him, to them gave he power to
become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name which were born,
not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of
God"- John i. 12, 13
THE manner of entrance into any relation must
correspond to the nature and character of the relation, and must be in harmony
and in keeping with it. If it is a relation of hired service of any sort, the
way into it is through a properly adjusted bargain or mutual agreement. If it
is such a relation as that of marriage, it is reached through consent on both
sides sufficiently intimated and certified. If it is right standing in the eye
of law, after being charged with crime, the only proper access is through a
legal and judicial sentence of acquittal. If it is restoration to friendship
and friendly intercourse, where misunderstanding and estrangenient have
prevailed, the healing of the breach, through explanation given and accepted,
is the obvious method of reconciliation.
The same rule or principle
must apply to the relation of fatherhood and sonship between God and his
people. According to what the relation itself is, so must the mode of entrance
into it be.
But, in the present instance, how may this condition be
realised?
I have been pleading for the identity of the relation, as
common to the Son and to those who are his. I have admitted, no doubt, these
two qualifications : - first, that he has filial consciousnesses and
experiences in the past eternity which they cannot have ; and secondly, that
their power of apprehending and appreciating all that the relation involves
must be immeasurably less than his. This last qualification, I would say in
passing, must be a continually decreasing one, as the years roll on of the
eternity that is to come. For all along the line of its endless ages, they will
be "growing in grace, and in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ." They will
be growing in their acquaintance with him as the Son; and in their
understanding of his manner of existence as the Son with the Father from
everlasting. With these qualifications, however, I have been maintaining that
the relation is the same ; that it is in their case substantially identical
with what it is in his.
How, then, are we to explain their admission into
this relation? Is there not a serious difficulty here? Assuredly there is ; and
it is a twofold difficulty. It may be put both as a natural, and as a
relational difficulty - if I may be allowed to use such a phrase. It may be
viewed either in the light of man's inward nature as a fallen being, or in the
light of his outward legal standing as a guilty subject.
I.
I begin with the consideration of the difficulty viewed as natural.
How is man, as a fallen being, to become capable of sonship?
Here, however,
I must, by way of preliminary remark, ask attention to the original and eternal
filiation of the Second Person in the Trinity. For, in connection with my
present subject, I cannot help thinking that there is something rather
remarkable in the representation which Scripture gives of our Lord's sonship,
and of the ground on which it originally rests. His entrance into this relation
had no beginning; and therefore to speak of the manner of his entrance into it
would be obviously unwarrantable. According to strict propriety of speech, he
never entered into it at all. It has been his from everlasting. And yet his
eternal relation is represented as resting from everlasting on his being
begotten. Mysterious, incomprehensible, generation lies at the root of it. He
is the only-begotten Son of God; "begotten, not made;" and begotten from
everlasting (John i. 14, 18 ; iii. 16, 18; 1 John iv. 9, etc.)
This is
unquestionably analogical language ; - it is speaking of God after the manner
of men. It is the setting forth of the original foundation of an eternal divine
relation, and an eternal distinction of related divine persons in the Godhead,
under the analogy of an act or event in human history and experience, having
its date, of course, in time. This is strange.
It is all the more so,
if I am right in my opinion that, as regards the nature and character of God's
paternal relation to his people, there is in Scripture, - especially in our
Lord's teaohing,-a studied avoiding of the human analogy; indicating a desire
on his part that his disciples should learn to conceive of their sonship, not
analogically at all, but by direct knowledge and insight ; - or, in other
words, that they should be led to apprehend their sonship, - not merely as a
relation similar to sonship in a human family, - nor even as a relation similar
to his own sonship in the divine family ; - but as identically the same
relation. In that view, I think the use of the human analogy to describe or
indicate the original constitution of the relation in the person of the Son,
must be felt to be not a little noticeable and significant. As to the question
- what the relation is ? - the human analogy is dispensed with, or rather
studiously shunned. As to the question - how it subsists from the beginning ? -
the human analogy is the chosen medium of revelation.
And yet, one would
say, the human analogy is in this latter ease even more inadequate than in the
former. The use of it, we might suppose, must be apt to mislead, or to be a
stumbling-block. Indeed it has misled and proved a stumbling-block to not a few
; - the phrase, "only-begotten" or "first-begotten," being in their view
irreconcilable with the doctrine of our Lord's supreme divinity, or his being
the coequal, coeternal, consubstantial Son of the everlasting Father.
With
all its imperfection, however, - when due allowance is made for the necessary
defectiveness of every earthly similitude of what is heavenly, - this human
analogy serves a most important purpose. It brings out, for one thing, the
idea. of entire sameness of nature. The begotten son of a divine father must be
himself essentially divine, - just as the begotten son of a human father is
himself essentially human. The Son of God must himself be as really God, as a
man's son is himself man. Thus the analogy, though it is a human analogy, does
not degrade or obscure the divine and eternal sonship of our Lord. It rather
illustrates and magnifies it.
Reflexly, also, this use of the term
"begotten" may shed light on the sonship of our Lord's disciples, and the
manner of its constitution. It now becomes, with reference to that subject, a
divine analogy. It is, as it were, taken up into heaven. It is there
appropriated, in a very wonderful way, to the relation of fatherhood and
sonship subsisting from everlasting between the eternal Father and his beloved
Son. From thence it may be brought to earth again. And, being thus sanctified
and elevated, it may be applied, in illustration of the relation of fatherhood
and sonship, as it is formed in time, between the eternal Father and the
brethren of his Son.
Here, however, it might seem that the entire and
utter inadequacy - not so much of the analogy to what is to be illustrated as
of what is to be illustrated to the analogy - must absolutely preclude the use
of the analogy, as in its very nature unsuitable and unsafe. There is,
undoubtedly, in such matters, the utmost need of caution. But I do not think
that I go too far when I suggest this thought. The employment of the
phraseology of earth, - and of such phraseology, - to denote the original
ground of the heavenly relation, may be merely an instance of gracious
condescension on the part of God. But to my apprehension, it rather looks like
a plan purposely intended to familiarise the minds of our Lord's disciples with
the idea of his sonship being of such a sort that they can share in it.
The soundest of the fathers, those most strenuous in maintaining the Son's
supreme divinity - his being uncreated and of one substance with the Father -
his absolute and unqualified equality, in respect of nature, with the Father -
were accustomed at the same time to allow, or rather to assert, a certain
mysterious distinction, in virtue of which the Second Person in the Godhead has
from everlasting been in some sense subordinate to the First, as the Third has
been to the First and the Second. And though some modern writers have demurred
to the opinion, thinking it inconsistent with a full belief of the Trinity, I
still incline on the whole to side with Bull, Pearson, and Horsley on this
question, if it really is a question, rather than with them.
Let it be
noted that it is a relational distinction exclusively that is contended for,
such as fits into what is written of the Father sending and the Son being sent;
the Father giving and the Son being given; the Father begetting and the Son
being begotten. And surely these last correlatives - begetting and begotten -
are fitted - may I not say intended - to facilitate somewhat the conception of
the relation which they indicate being such as we may have communicated to us.
Not only is it a relation having its analogical representation in the natural
human fatherhood and sonship ; it is even capable of really and actually
moulding into conformity with itself the spiritual fatherhood and sonship which
is constituted by grace. Whatever these expressions imply - in the line of
relational priority in the Father and relational subordination in the Son -
tends to harmonise sonship with creatureship. They go far to establish a
presumption a priori that, whether in Christ or in his disciples, the
relations may not be incompatible. It may thus appear how, in virtue of the
grace by which he who is the only-begotten Son becomes a subject - they who are
originally subjects only may be, in a real and vital sense, "begotten," or born
again, as sons.
For it is the manner in which the two relations are
combined that is here again the main question. In considering it, the
incarnation must once more be the guiding fact.
What is it that
constitutes Jesus, in and from his human birth, the Son of God? Or, otherwise,
and more properly shaping the inquiry, - what is it about his human birth that
prevents it, if one may say so, from clashing with his sonship, and secures
that on the contrary his sonship shall continue identically the same,
notwithstanding his change of state? Is it not the agency of the Holy Ghost in
the production of his holy human nature?
The angel's annunciation to
the Virgin Mary seems certainly to imply this at all events, - .-that if her
son had taken human nature as it is in fallen creatures ; - if he had been born
after the ordinary manner of men ; - divine sonship could not have been
ascribed to him in his original condition as man. Any such supposition,
however, carries in its bosom an intolerable, and all but inconceivable,
contradiction. It would make Christ - who, though uniting in himself the two
natures, continues to be one person - the Father's Son in one of the two
natures, and not the Father's Son in the other. But this, - as we have seen, is
a plain and palpable inconsistency; sonship being not a relation of the nature
or natures to God, but a relation of the person. Hence the necessity of Christ
becoming man in such a way as to secure that there shall be nothing in his
manhood incompatible with continued sonship; or, in other words, with his being
still the Son of God in his one undivided person, whole and entire. His being
born through the operation of the Holy Ghost secures that. For it secures to
him the possession of a human nature such as, from the very first moment of its
existence, is capable of sharing in the filial relation with the divine nature
- a body, soul, spirit, such as the Son of God may worthily take into personal
union with himself, continuing still to be the Son.
Some may think at
first sight - and the objection has been seriously urged - that this makes the
Holy Ghost the father of our Lord's humanity, in respect of his being the agent
in its production. But it is not so. There cannot be a father of a nature, but
only of a person. Our Lord's human nature never had any proper personality of
its own. It was assumed by him into his personality as the Son. What the Holy
Ghost had to do was to provide that it should be such as the Son could thus
assume, without derogation from his sonship.
Now, if it was necessary
that the Holy Ghost should thus fashion and mould the human nature of Christ, -
in order to its being such as might not detract from, but rather harmonise
with, and even adorn, the relation of sonship in which he stands from all
eternity to the Father, - much more are the good offices of the same gracious
Spirit needed for human nature as it is in us, if we are to have a share in
that relation.
And here the task might well seem to be more difficult,
- the problem harder to be worked out. In his case it was simply a birth that
the Holy Spirit had to effect; in ours it is a new birth. For him, he had to
provide a manhood such as the Son of God might wear, by what might be regarded
as equivalent to an act of creative energy, or the utterance of the creative
fiat. In us he finds manhood so marred and corrupted that it requires to be, in
a sense, unmade that it may be made over again anew. Nor is this unmaking and
remaking a simple process. It demands the application of some power or specific
that shall avail to obliterate the stains of guilt, - to break up entirely the
whole of the old inner man, - to root out the seed of Satanic insubordination
which is native and indigenous, and implant the seed of God, whence a new life
of willing and obedient subjectship, compatible with highest and holiest
sonship, may consistently spring.
This is the work of the Spirit in
regeneration. Is it not a work corresponding closely to his agency in the human
birth of Christ? He generated Christ's humanity that he might continue to be
the Son. He regenerates our humanity that we may become sons. To be "born of
the Spirit" may thus, I think, be shown to be, as far as the human nature and
human state are concerned, an indispensable preliminary condition of that
nature and that state being reconcilable with sonship.
II. But it is not enough to make out a capacity of
sonship, or a fitness for sonship, in the human nature of the Son as generated
- and in that of his disciples as regenerated - by the Holy Ghost. There must
be an express act of the Father declaring or constituting the relation. For the
possibillity of any of the fallen race of man being righteously owned and
acknowledged as sons might well be called in question. Even if, subjectively,
an inward renewal and regeneration of their natures might be effected, would
that suffice for so righting, objectively, their standing in God's sight as to
ensure legitimately and righteously the sonship? Nay, - more. When the eternal
Son became one of the human family, - even under the guarantee of his not being
himself personally involved in their natural pollution and criminality, - was
it quite obvious beforehand that this could take place without the sacrifice or
compromise - or, to say the least, the keeping in abeyance of his sonship?
There must be as regards both - as regards both Christ and his people - an
authoritative and official procedure, as it were, on the part of the Father; -
declaring the continuance of the relation and its fuller development in his
case ; constituting the relation in theirs. For him, it is the announcement of
the voice from heaven at his baptism, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am
well pleased." For them, it is the act of free and gracious adoption.
I
connect the two. And yet there is a vast difference. The voice from heaven
recognises sonship already subsisting - having subsisted from all eternity, and
continuing to subsist still unchanged, though by his assuming human nature the
Son has become a creature and a subject. The act of adoption on the other hand
confers sonship of new, de novo, on those who are originally nothing
more than creatures and subjects. It assumes a newborn capacity of receiving
sonship. But it does not assume, it constitutes, the sonship itself. It is a
pure and simple act of the free grace of God.
Notwithstanding this
difference, however, there is one particular in respect of which the declared
or recognised Son, and the adopted sons, are on the same footing. In the case
of both alike there is required, as a preliminary to the manifestation of the
relation of sonship in all its glory and blessed joy, a full and final clearing
up and settlement of whatever may be doubtful, or whatever may be wrong, in the
relation of subjectship.
The Son himself, after his coming in the
flesh, was not declared to be "the Son of God with power" till "his
resurrection from the dead" (Rom. i. 4). Up till that time, he had to meet and
contend with the liabilities which he had undertaken as "made under the law ; "
- made under it when it had been broken by us, and had to be magnified and
honoured at a terrible cost by him. He was "crucified through weakness." It is
only thus that "he liveth by the power of God" (2 Cor. xii. 4). He must first
be himself justified, through his fulfilling all the righteousness which he
became bound on our account to fulfil, and expiating all the guilt which he
consented on our account to answer for. His sonship, now that it has become
associated with subjectship - in the broken and disordered state to which we,
in whose nature he becomes a subject, have reduced this last relationship -
cannot be set free, as it were, and made thoroughly available, as a source of
power, otherwise than by this preliminary procedure of law.
When the
case is that of creatures and subjects who are to be raised to the position of
sons, a similar preliminary procedure of law would seem to be, a
fortiori, indispensable.
I think it must be held to have been so,
even when angels were the parties. If I am right in believing that these high
and pure intelligences were not sons originally, in virtue of their creation or
their innocence, but became sons, by a sovereign act of grace on the part of
God - that act, I cannot doubt, must have followed the trial of their
obedience. If so, it must have been preceded by what to them would be
substantially equivalent to a sentence of justification. For the trial,
whatever it was, to which they were subjected was really trial under law, and
in terms of law. It turned upon their willingness to acknowledge and submit to
the moral government of God, as ruling them by law and judgment. That was what
was put to the test. When their companions sinned and were condemned, they
through grace stood the test and were acquitted; they were accepted as
righteous; in a word, they were justified. Their probation being well over,
they are judicially, and as if it were by the sentence of a court, declared to
be not merely innocent and upright creatures, but obedient subjects who have
kept the commandment, and are on that account entitled to life. Then, as I
conceive, and not before, they are in a condition to receive the adoption of
Sons. For there is no inward work of the regenerating Spirit needed in their
case; nor need the Son assume their nature to redeem them, before he can have
them as his brethren. All that is required is an outward act of grace, the
appropriate recompense and reward of the obedience by which they have made good
their title to justification: The Son is presented to them by the Father; and
the Spirit, by whom they have been enabled to stand as subjects, ensures their
willingness to accept the position of Sons.
The case is, of course,
somewhat altered when it is not holy angels but fallen men who are concerned.
Still, allowance being made for difference of circumstances, the principle
which rules it is essentially the same. Their relation to God as subjects must
first be put upon a right and satisfactory footing before they can become
sons.
This necessity has already been considered in its bearing on the
redeeming work of Christ. I now advert to it again in connection with the
gracious act of God conferring, and the gracious act of the believer
appropriating, the benefit which immediately flows from Christ's redeeming work
- the benefit of justification, as opening the way to the ulterior and higher
benefit of adoption.
So long as men are in a state of guilt and
condemnation under the righteous sentence of the law, they cannot be regarded
as fit subjects for becoming the sons of God. Nor is the disqualification to be
viewed as being merely of a vague and general sort ; - as if the objection
raised on the part of God might be something like the repugnance which a man of
pure taste and refined manners would naturally feel to admitting coarse,
low-minded, ill-bred vagrants to the familiarities and sanctities of his home.
If that were all, the difficulty or scruple might be got over by a little
patience and forbearance, a little tact, a little judicious treatment and
prudent kindness. Were the person I had to deal with merely, in some such
indefinite sense as that, offensive to me, a moderate expenditure of time and
pains might amend the fault. But he is in the hands of justice. The law has a
hold over him. He is tried, convicted, condemned. He is an imprisoned criminal,
either undergoing his sentence or awaiting the execution of it. That is the
precise obstacle which, in the case of fallen man, must be got out of the way.
And it is removed in his justification. Faith, uniting him to Christ, and
making Christ and Christ's righteousness his, secures his being absolved from
guilt and accounted righteous. He is now a free subject, and therefore cpable
of sonship.
I have been endeavouring to trace and point out the nature
of the connection which I hold to subsist between our becoming sons of God and
our regeneration, on the one hand, with our justification, on the other. It
seems to me to be of some consequence to have that determined as clearly as
possible ; - I mean not only the connection but the nature of it. I cannot help
suspecting that loose and indefinite views here have led to our forming
somewhat inadequate apprehensions of what the sonship of Christ's disciples
really is. Neither our regeneration nor our justification constitutes our
sonship neither of them is the formal ground or warrant of our being sons of
God. That is to be found in God's free and sovereign act of grace alone ; - in
his "giving us the power" or privilege "to become the sons of God;" in his
"calling us the sons of God;" in his having "predestinated us unto the adoption
of children" (John i. 12; 1 John iii. 1; Eph. i. 5). But both regeneration and
justification have a material bearing on this act of God, and it is important
to know as exactly as may be what that bearing is. Perhaps the tendency has
been to separate adoption somewhat too much from regeneration on the one side,
and on the other side to confound it somewhat too much with
justification.
I. In the writings
of Jolm - I refer especially of course to his Gospel and First Epistle - the
sonship, not only of Christ but of his disciples, is more fully and affectingly
brought out than in other parts of scripture. It is John who sets before us
most clearly and touchingly his master's filial manner of life. If we would
obtain an insight into what Jesus as the Son is to the Father and the Father to
him, we must ponder incessantly these books; nor will one ponder them long, I
am well persuaded, without coming to the conviction, based on countless minute
touches of most pathetic tenderness, that Jesus meant to identify those whom
the Father had given him with himself in his sonship. John does not say much of
the manner of our entering into that relation; but what he does say appears to
me to make it turn very much on regeneration.
Thus, in the outset of
his Gospel (i. 12, 13), he connects very emphatically the statement concerning
"the Word," - "that to as many as received him, he gave power to become the
sons of God, even to them that believe on his name," - with this explanation, -
"which were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of
the man, but of God." And immediately he goes on to say of "the Word made
flesh, and dwelling among us, full of grace and truth," - " We beheld his
glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father."
Here, in the
first place, I cannot but conclude that John intends to represent the sonship
of those who receive "the Word," and believe on his name, as substantially the
same relation with the sonship of "the Word" himself. It is not impossible, and
not, I think, very improbable, that John may have been acquainted with what
Paul had written - " We all, with open face, beholding as in a glass the glory
of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by
the spirit of the Lord" (2 Cor. iii. 18.) Had he that scripture in his mind
when, speaking evidently of sonship, he says, - we beheld the glory of the
sonship of the only begotten ? - beheld it so as to be changed into the same
image, into the very form and fashion of that glorious relation? Of course I do
not attach any argumentative importance to this conjecture, although it may
serve for an illustration. Apart from that altogether, there is enough, I
think, in the passage which I have quoted, taken by itself, to support my first
conclusion with regard to it.
My second conclusion is more material to
my present purpose. It is drawn from the fact that John connects very pointedly
and emphatically our "becoming sons of God" with our "being born of God." Does
not this intimate that, while acknowledging the act of grace towards us in
which God gives us the standing of sons, he would represent our sonship as
largely dependent also on the work of grace in us by which God gives us the
nature of sons? "Power" of right "to become sons of God," secures the filial
standing; "being born of God" secures the filial nature.
This last
conclusion from these words in John's Gospel will commend itself with most
peculiar force to those who are most intimately acquainted with his way of
writing in his First Epistle.
Turning to that book we find one passage
especially in which the manner of our entering into the relation of sonship is
noticed. Our being sons is ascribed to the calling of God (iii. 1): - "Behold
what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called
the sons of God." Of course there is no difficulty in understanding what is
meant by our being called by the Father the sons of God. It is not a nominal
but a real calling that is intended, the actual constituting of a real
relation. But the statement seems to make sonship depend solely and exclusively
on God's calling, that is, on his adoptive act. It is not so, however. This
verse should not be separated from the verse immediately preceding it (ii. 29),
in which it is said that "every one that doeth righteousness is born of God."
For it is plainly that thought, "being born of God," which suggests to John the
burst of adoring gratitude, "Behold what manner of love the Father hath
bestowed on us that we should be called the sons of God." Thus, in point of
fact, John rests that sonship, which is in his eyes so wonderful, mainly on our
being born of God. Nor is this all. John, repeating the assertion, "we are the
sons of God;' continues to dwell with singular earnestness and explicitness on
what being born of God means, and what it involves - perfect likeness to God
hereafter (iii. 2); purity like his now (3); having the seed of God remaining
in us as the germ of an impeccable life (9). It is impossible, I think, to read
that whole passage in the epistle with any care and thought, without coming to
the conviction that John attaches a very deep meaning indeed to our being born
of God; that he looks upon it as in some real and vital sense analogous - not
merely to the relation of the human child to the human parent - but to the act
in which the relation originates; that he regards it as actually effecting a
certain community of nature between God and man.
Keeping all this in
view, I can scarcely doubt that John's design is to represent our being sons of
God as connected very closely with our regeneration; and connected, too, after
the very same manner that a man's being the son of his earthly parent is
connected with his generation in time ; - or what I apprehend was more in
John's mind, after the very same manner that the Lord's being the Son of his
heavenly Father is connected with his generation from eternity. If so, then
that makes sonship not merely a relation of adoption, but in a real and
important sense a natural relation also. There must be adoption. But he who
adopts regenerates. The regeneration is a real communication to us on his part
of "his seed," of what makes our moral and spiritual nature the same in
character as his ; perfectly so at last, and imperfectly yet as far as it
prevails, truly so, even now. Arid this regeneration makes the adoption real.
The adopted Sons are sons by nature, and that, too, in a very literal
acceptation of the term.
These views may be of use as enabling us
better to understand how the sonship of Christ and that of his people are and
must be, in a very intimate sense, identical; how it is one and the same
relation for both. There are no more two sonships, one for them and another for
him, than there are two sonships for him, one for his human nature and
condition, and another for his divine. There is but one sonship for us both. It
may well be so, if in us, as in him, it is a natural sonship.
Those who
would make a distinction between the sonships, Christ's and ours, sometimes
represent it as turning on the distinction between natural and adoptive sonship
; - Christ being the Father's son by nature, we being sons by adoption on'y. If
the reference here is to the fact that whereas Christ is God's Son from the
beginning we have become God's sons only yesterday ; - his, in that view, being
of the very essence of his existence, a necessity of his very being, while ours
is nothing of the sort ; - the fact is of course admitted. I have attempted,
however, formerly to show that it is not to the purpose in this argument If
anything more is meant, the distinction may now be seen to be without warrant.
If we are the sons of God at all, we are, in virtue of our regeneration, his
sons by nature as well as by adoption. The nature, as well as the standing, of
the Son is ours.
I would only further add, on this part of my subject,
that while John is our chief authority, it is not John alone who ascribes so
high a signification to the change which the Holy Spirit effects in the new
birth - making it imply the production of a certain community of nature between
God and us. Peter speaks expressly of the children of God being "partakers of
the divine nature " - (2 Ep. i. 4). Paul also, when he would reconcile us as
sons to the chastening and corrective discipline of "the Father of spirits,"
represents this as the design of our Father's faithful dealing with us, "that
we might be partakers of his holiness " - (Heb. xii. 10). And again, when he
announces the high rank to which, from everlasting, God has destined "them that
love him, and are the called according to his purpose," he describes them as
"predestinated to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the
first-born among many brethren " - (Rom. viii. 28, 29). Surely this is a strong
assertion of their actual participation with the Son in his own very sonship.
And it is made to rest on their being conformed to his image ;" or, in other
words, on their community of nature with him. For though the Son's relation to
the Father may be partly what is meant by "his image" here, - and the exact
assimilation of our relation to the Father to his may consequently be partly
what is meant by our being "conformed to his image " - yet the phrase can
scarcely be taken otherwise than as inclusive of sameness of nature as well as
sameness of relation. Likeness or identity of nature is what makes likeness or
identity of relation possible and conceivable. And it is that also which makes
it capable of being realised in consciousness and experience; more and more so,
as the conformity to the image of the Son of God grows more and more complete ;
until, in the full and final "regeneration" of the resurrection, the full and
final "adoption, to wit, the redemption of the body" (23), long waited for,
comes at last. Then is he indeed "the first-born among many brethren."
II. But if this relation of sonship, as
shared by the Son with his disciples, has suffered from its close connection
with regeneration not having been sufficiently recognised, it has suffered
perhaps still more seriously from so many of our theologians having failed to
recognise sufficiently its entire distinction and separation from
justification. The two have, to a large extent, been confounded and mixed up
together. What God does in the act of adoption has been so represented as to
make it either a part of what he does in the act of justification, or a mere
appendage and necessary corollary involved in that act. Turretine, for example
(Locus XVI., Qucestio vi.), expressly and formally includes adoption in his
exposition of justification. He makes adoption nothing more than another name
for the positive element which all the reformed divines held to be embraced in
justification. They all held that in the justification of any man there are
these two things implied - the pardon of his sins and the acceptance of his
person. He is on the one hand judicially, and in terms of law, absolved from
guilt, from ill-desert, from just liability to punishment. And he is on the
other hand - judicially also and in terms of law - pronounced righteous. He is
acknowledged as having fulfilled all incumbent obligations, in virtue of his
oneness with him who has done so in his stead; and he is received into favour
accordingly. Even the former of these two things held to be implied in our
justification, goes far beyond the mere idea of the remission of the threatened
and deserved punishment, which is all that mankind naturally care for; all that
they really include in their favourite fancy of an universal fatherhood. It
carries in it the removal, not merely of the penalty, but of the desert of the
penalty. It is the taking away, not only of that to which our guilt justly
exposes us and makes us liable, but of our guilt itself. It is a thorough
absolution. And when the second of the two things held to be implied in our
justification is taken into account - our being treated, not only as if we had
never sinned, but as if we had fulfilled all righteousness - it may be seen how
far God's manner of dealing with us when he justifies us goes beyond the manner
of men. This will be all the more apparent when it is considered that, in
virtue of our real union to Christ by faith, the whole is a real transaction.
It is no mere fiction in law. The use of the phrase "as if," in describing it,
though scarcely to be avoided, is unfortunate and improper. As made one with
Christ personally, by the Spirit working in me appropriating and uniting faith,
I am really and truly one with him in his absolution from my guilt which he
took upon himself, and in his being accepted as righteous on account of his
"obedience unto death" for me.
I state thus as broadly and strongly as
I can the great Reformation doctrine. For I would not lower justification in
order to exalt adoption. On the contrary, the higher any one raises the
privilege of justification, the better for my view; since I hold adoption to be
a privilege higher still. It is the admission of a person thoroughly justified,
as being really one with the Father's righteous Servant, to fellowship with him
with whom he is one, in his higher position, as the Father's only begotten and
well-beloved Son.
For that reason partly, I object to Turretine's
identification of adoption with what may be described as the second or positive
part of justification. But there is another objection to his view. It makes the
act of God in adoption savour, as I think, too much of a legal and judicial
procedure. Take special attention to this consideration.
The more
strictly we attach the character of a legal and judicial procedure to the act
of God in justification so much the better. It is only, I believe, in that way
that we can really maintain the infinite distance that there should always be
felt to be between God, the Creator, Ruler, Judge of all, and ourselves, who,
as his creatures, are nothing more than his intelligent subjects. It is only in
that way that we can uphold, in all its integrity, his government by law and
judgment. We can scarcely, therefore, err in the direction of viewing
justification too forensically - casting it too strongly into the mould of what
passes, or may be supposed to pass, in a court of law. Nor need that detract
from the grace of the ace, on the part of God. On the contrary, it is only when
we recognise its strictly forensic character that the real grace of the act
appears; and only in proportion as its strictly forensic character is
practically apprehended and realised, will its real grace be felt. For in fact
- strict law and judgment apart - Christ's work of redemption and God's act of
justification founded upon it, so far from indicating grace, imply something
like the opposite of grace. Strict law and judgment apart, - no reason can
possibly be given for the interposition of the Son being required, with such
suffering as it entailed on him, and for the Father's forgiveness being based
on that interposition, which does not derogate from grace - which does not, in
fact, impart to the whole transaction an ungracious aspect - as if God
personally needed to be conciliated and appeased. It is only by adhering
strictly to the legal and judicial character of the transaction - by viewing it
as properly and literally forensic, both as regards God's treatment of Christ
for us and as regards his treatment of us in Christ - that we can see and
appreciate the grace that there is in our justification. Then, indeed, grace
shines forth in it conspicuously - grace providing the substitute; grace
accepting the substitute; grace making us one with the substitute; grace
receiving us and dealing with us as one with the substitute. Thus, to conserve
its gracious character, it is indispensably necessary to hold firm and fast the
forensic character of justification.
All the more, however, on that
very account, it seems desirable to extricate adoption out of its entanglement
with justification, and to recognise it as having a place and character of its
own in God's manner of dealing with us ; a place and character not in any
proper sense forensic at all. No doubt the term adoption may be suggestive of
legal procedure; - it is a term which occurs in law-books. In countries where
the practice prevails it is commonly regulated by statute. It was so of old in
the Roman commonwealth and empire; and it is probably the Roman usage that the
New Testament writers have in view on the rare occasions - for they are
comparatively rare - on which they thus designate the Christian sonship. Where
adoption is allowed to affect civil and patrimonial rights, as it was held to
do under the government of Rome, the parties must necessarily be required to
appear before the judge, in order to have the transaction duly attested and
recorded. I suppose that even in our own country, where this practice is not so
expressly and formally recognised in law as it was at Rome, if I wished to
adopt a strange child, to the effect of investing him with a legal right to
maintenance and to the succession as my child, I would be obliged to go through
some legal form. Let it be observed, however, that there is the widest
difference between that and a purely forensic procedure. The case is not
submitted to a tribunal for decision, but only for ascertainment and
registration. No judicial sentence is asked for, or is competent. The adoption
itself is altogether extrajudicial ; as much so as is the contracting of
marriage; though in both cases it may belong to the judge or magistrate to
require that he shall be satisfied as to the good order of what is done, and
the good faith of the parties doing it.
I think it is of as much
consequence to maintain the thoroughly unforensic character of God's act in
adopting, as it is to maintain the strictly forensic character of his act in
justifying. All is legal and judicial in the latter act ; if it were not so,
there would be no grace in it at all. Nothing is legal or judicial in the other
; if there were anything of that sort in it, all its grace would be gone. I
look upon God as in adoption giving full and unrestrained vent to the pure
fatherly love which he has for his own dear Son; pouring it out upon him so
lavishly that it overflows upon all that are his. There is nothing in his
fatherhood or in his fatherly treatment of his Son that savours of the legal,
the judicial, the forensic. There was once needed a very short and sharp
dealing of that sort, on the Father's part, with the Son of his love, when he
stood in our stead, as not only a subject but a criminal. That, however, is all
over now. As criminal for our crime he has paid the penalty ; - as subject on
our behalf he has fulfilled the righteousness. No outstanding claim of justice
can ever arrest the flow of his Father's fatherly love. Nor does it flow by any
legal rule, or under any legal restriction or condition. It is simply fatherly
love. And it is that very love of which our adoption, following upon our
justification and associated with our regeneration, makes us, as his brethren,
partakers.
There are, I think, two practical advantages connected with
our keeping clear the distinction on which I have been insisting, between the
forensic character of God's act in justifying us, and the unforensic character
of his act in adopting us, - as well as of his treatment of us consequent upon
that act. To these I shall very briefly advert before I close the present
lecture.
1. In the matter of our
justification, we are accustomed to be very scrupulous in excluding everything
on our part except faith alone. And it is carefully explained that faith is
admitted as the means of our being justified, not because it has any merit, or
virtue, or goodness in itself, - nor because it is the source of goodness,
since it "worketh by love". - but only because it is the hand that accepts the
benefit; or rather because it is the heart that embraces him in whom the
benefit resides. It unites us to Christ. In the matter of our adoption again,
it is the very circumstance of its "working by love" that fits faith for being
the appropriate organ or instrument. In fact, one might almost put it thus -
that love occupies somewhat of the same place with reference to adoption or
sonship which faith occupies with reference to justification. It is in the
exercise of mere and simple faith that we apprehend and realise our acceptance
as righteous in the sight of God. It is in the exercise of faith working by
love, or of the love by which faith works, that we apprehend and realise our
loving fellowship with our heavenly Father as his sons.
This may be
partly what the Lord means by these remarkable words, "At that day, ye shall
ask in my name: and I say not that I will pray the Father for you; for the
Father himself loveth you, because ye have loved me, and have believed that I
came out from God" - (John xvi. 26, 27). The elder brother, having presented
himself and those whom "he is not ashamed to call his brethren," to their
common father, saying - " Behold, I and the little ones whom thou hast given
me," - steps for a moment aside. He declines to be a mere negotiator between
his Father and the younger members of the family, as if there were still some
distance or reserve. He insists on their using their full privilege of sonship,
and making full proof of their Father's heart ; tasting and seeing how he loves
them for the love they bear to the Son; the love which, in a sense, constitutes
them sons themselves.
I am inclined to think that this view which I am
attempting to explain of sonship as not a part of justification, nor a mere
corollary from it, but a distinct and separate benefit, - differently
conferred, at least in some respects, and differently apprehended and realised,
- will be found to be of some practical importance. There is unquestionably, in
certain quarters, a feeling of distaste and dislike apt to arise when God is
represented as on the one hand dealing judicially with Christ standing in the
room of his people, and then, on the other hand, dealing judicially with them
in virtue of their being one with him by faith. The whole transaction in both
its parts, in requiring from the surety satisfaction to law and justice, and in
giving us the benefit of that satisfaction, appears to some to wear a harsh,
technical, and legal aspect; a sort of cold, business-like, court-of-justice
air, which they cannot relish It is not difficult to show that this is a
prejudice, occasioned, - either by the rude and coarse way in which the
doctrine is sometimes handled by unwise advocates and expounders of it, - or,
which is the far more common case, by some gross caricature of it which the
parties choose to draw or paint for themselves. At the same time, - if that is
the only mode of God's dealing with Christ, and with those whom Christ answers
for in the judgment, which is prominently brought forward and insisted upon, -
there may undoubtedly be some risk of its degenerating into barren and dogmatic
orthodoxy. It would be a curious and interesting speculation to inquire whether
we may not thus, to some extent at least, account for the lapse of the theology
of the Reformation in the schools and colleges of the continent, as well as
among ourselves, first into rigid and frigid scholastic systematising, and then
into rationalism. At all events, I am persuaded that we have a stroig safeguard
against any such danger, if we do full justice to the common sonship of Christ
and of Christ's disciples ; - erecting it into a distinct and separate article
of belief, and giving it a well-defined place of its own, "with ample room and
verge enough," among the truths of the Christian creed and the elements of
Christian experience. "Beloved, now are we the sons of God." Let that be fully
taught.
2. My second observatioir
is very much the, converse of the former. The manner of treating this whole
subject for which I have been pleading seems to me well fitted to erect a
barrier against all Antinomian and Neonomian tendencies. The mixing up, in any
way or in any measure, of God's dealing with us as sons in our adoption, and
his dealing with us as subjects in our forgiveness and acceptance, is apt to
open the door for the notion, either of law, old strict law, being superseded,
or of its being somehow modified. The idea of some sort of compromise between
the paternal and the judicial in God's treatment of us, very readily suggests
itself. And believers, once justified by faith, are either held to have nothing
to do with law at all, it being their privilege to act, not from a sense of
legal obligation, but from the spontaneous prompting of affection; or else they
are held to be under some mysterious new form or fashion of law, partaking too
often not a little of the character of license. There will be little room for
such imaginations if the right balance and adjustment between our justification
as subjects and our adoption as sons is maintained. For I need scarcely say
that though they are to be distinguished, these two are not to be disjoined. We
are not to conceive of them as successive states; as if our state as justified
subjects coming first gave place to our state as adopted sons following after.
They are simultaneous states, to be realised continually as such. Love reigns
in both. Love delighting in the holy and good law of the Ruler reigns in the
one; in the other, love rejoicing in the endearments of the Father. It is the
very love which moved the Ruler's righteous servant, the Father's beloved Son,
to say, "I delight to do thy will, 0 my God; yea, thy law is within my heart ;"
"my meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work ;" "I
must be about my Father's business ;" "The cup which my Father giveth me, shall
I not drink it?"
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