Facts and
Theories as to a Future State
CHAPTER XXIII
THE MINISTRY OF DEATH
IF death has then the place which we have seen it has, it
is no longer a strange thing to hear of a "ministration of death"; nay, it is
rather just what we should have reason to expect, that God would take up the
fact of it, and of the condemnation of man which it involves, and press it home
upon the hearts and consciences of men in some distinct and positive way. We
should expect from His goodness, that He would not be content in letting the
fact speak for itself, but would give it a voice and utterance which should be
in itself - however much men might shut their ears to it - an unmistakable one.
Now this is precisely what the apostle says he has done. The character
of the law - of the Old Testament therefore - is that it was a "a ministration
of death," - a "ministration. of condemnation."
Death was therein taken
up as a moral,. yea, spiritual teacher of a lesson most humbling to mans
pride indeed, and therefore most difficult to learn; but a lesson, when learnt,
of the very greatest value. It was made a teacher of the inadequacy of all
human righteousness, the impotence of human power, the impossibility of a
corrupt and fallen creature standing in the presence of a holy God: all this we
shall find in the Jewish system when once we understand: that the death it
speaks of - "the soul that sinneth it shall die" - is not the yet unrevealed
second death, but," "death"in its ordinary sense. This once established
satisfactorily, we shall find the Old Testament in a new light, and the perfect
self-consistency of truth everywhere in its utterances.
And this will
be established, as soon it is seen, what should be manifest as to the holy law
of the unchangeable God, that the obedience it required was absolute, perfect
obedience, and nothing short. This the New Testament, no less than the Old,
abundantly declares. We have already had the apostles statement as to
this, which shows that Christianity itself also had not modified the laws
requirements. It is the great apostle of the Gentiles, the man who, if any did,
understood Gods grace in the gospel, who assures us that "as many as are
of the works of the law are under the curse; for it is written, Cursed is every
one that continueth not in all things that are written in the book of the law
to do them" (Gal. iii. 10). It is again the apostle who is considered by many
(however improperly) the apostle of law, who unites with Paul in this
testimony, that "whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one
point, he is guilty of all" (James ii. 10). Unswerving, perfect obedience -was
therefore that required by the law.
To this, however, may be thought
opposed the whole system of appointed sacrifices and the forgiveness that in
this way the very law itself proclaimed. But the objection would apply then to
the apostles teaching, who certainly were not ignorant of so plain a
fact. We must take it up, however, a little particularly, and try to show the
consistency of these two things.
There were, as all will easily
remember, two givings of the law. The first time (which we shall find as
history in Exodus xix.-xxiv.) it. was pure law, with no whispered word even of
mercy, - no provision for failure or for sin. Moses is then called up into the
Mount to receive from Gods hand the tables of stone "written with the
finger of God." There, in the Mount, he does indeed see the pattern of other
and of heavenly things, for God would show us that mercy is already in His
heart, as it surely is. But no word of this is yet spoken to the people, and as
actual institution finds; no place till the covenant of the law as first given
is transgressed and set aside. As far as the people is concerned, it is all as
yet law pure and simple. Under this they fail utterly, turning their
deliverer-God, "their glory, into the similitude of an ox that eateth grass."
The tables of the covenant are broken; judgment is executed on the guilty
people; and all, on this ground, is over forever (ch. xxxii.).
But the
blessed God has still resources in Himself, and again He takes up the people.
Again the law is given, word for word the same, and not a jot abated; for the
holiness of Gods nature can know no change. But there is this difference,
and it is characteristic: it is now written by the hand of the mediator (xxxiv.
28), and not by God Himself. The law is in the hands of the mediator, and now
we hear the new glad tones of long-suffering goodness and mercy.
Jehovah declares Himself, as he did not before. His glory shines out as
not yet it had. He is "the Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious,
.long-suffering and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for
thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin." This is new ground;
and yet not altogether new, nor grace unmixed: He is still the Lawgiver, still
in a covenant of works with His people - "and that will by no means clear the
guilty." This is the new basis upon which everything is now to rest. It is law,
but it is not pure law. It is law in a mediators hand, ministered in
mercy, yet not lessening its requirement: an apparent, contradiction, and in
reality two principles. united which cannot unite really in the justification
of man. God says so: He cannot clear - cannot justify; and it is of the law
thus given, the second time and not the first, that the apostle speaks when he
calls the law "written and engraven in stones," " the ministration of death"
and "the ministration of condemnation" (2 Cor. iii. 7,9). . It is of this law
in the hand of the mediator, that he says again
"As many as are of the
works of the law are under the curse."
If we look at the scene
described in the book of Exodus (xxxiii., xxxiv.), we shall find that God
really gave witness at the very time He gave it, of its true character,
although in that typical way, the well-known characteristic of Old Testament
revelation. When Moses the mediator, and thus the representative of the people,
prays, "I beseech Thee, show me Thy glory," God answers: "I will make all my
goodness pass before thee, and will proclaim the name of the Lord before thee,
and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I
will show mercy." But He adds, - and the words are the key-note of the Old
Testament dispensation, - "THOU CANST NOT SEE MY FACE; for there shall no man
see me, and live. And He said, There is a place by me, and thou shalt stand
upon a rock; and it shall come to pass, while my glory passeth by, that I will
put thee in a cleft of the rock, and cover thee with my hand while my glory
passeth by; and I will take away my hand, and thou shalt see my back parts; but
my FACE shall not be seen."
And thus, as at the first time of the
giving of the law, the flame of fire upon the quaking mount, hid, not revealed,
the Divine Goodness; so even now, while goodness covered the human eyes not yet
able to behold face to face the One in whose presence he stood, still. it
COVERED THEM; and what Moses actually saw, as the mediator of that
dispensation, was: GOD WITH HIS FACE TURNED AWAY.
And that remained the
feature of that old economy. It was what the veil before the holiest declared:
the way into the holiest was not yet manifested. None could stand in His
presence. All had sinned, and having sinned, came short of the glory of God.
Death, not life, condemnation, not righteousness, was the ministration of the
law.
God might forgive iniquity, transgression and sin. But He could.
by no means clear the guilty. He could make known His long-suffering, and say,
"When the wicked man turneth from his wickedness, and doeth that which is
lawful and right, he shall save his soul alive" (Ezek. xviii. 27). But who ever
did what was lawful, as measured by a law, to break one commandment of which
was to be "guilty of all"? Who ever broke off his sins so as to be fit for the
presence of a "holy, holy, holy" God? Never one: not one. "There is none
righteous, no, not one" was the laws verdict; "there is none that doeth
good, no, not one." And the veil hung before Gods presence unlifted, save
as once a year the typical blood was put upon the mercy-seat; and then it
dropped again, impenetrable as ever, for "the blood of bulls and goats could
not take away sin."
Thus, through all the old economy: until one day,
marked out from other days by a darkness such as never was. And when that
passed, the darkness in which God dwelt had also passed. "The veil of the
temple was rent in the midst."
God was no more "in the darkness"; He
was "in the light" (1 Kings viii. 12; 1 John i. 7).
The way into Gods
presence was no more barred up: Christ was "the Way" (John xiv. 6).
And
instead of; as heretofore, One who could not clear the guilty, there was
revealed the glory of divine grace, justifying the ungodly (Rom iv. 5).
One would gladly enlarge upon this unspeakable loving-kindness; - would
gladly apply this healing assurance to any soul conscious of the double
character of evil attaching to man. He is "ungodly"; true, but he is more, much
more, than that: he is "without strength" also. Christ died for him as having
that character (Rom. v. 6). As having it, he is welcome at once to the blood
which cleanses from sin, and the grace which strengthens and enables for
holiness. But our subject is now the character of the law rather: let us turn
back to consider what this involves as to the Old Testament.
God was,
then, by a dispensation of law, shutting man up to mercy. He was running the
plough-share into the soil to prepare it for the seed of the gospel. lie was
not by it saving: He was convicting and condemning. The New Testament
constantly asserts this as the object of the law. The apostle speaks of it as
what all Christians were well aware of: "We know that what things soever the
law saith, it saith to them that are under the law, that every mouth might be
stopped, and all the world become guilty before God." "By the law is the
knowledge of sin." "The Law worketh wrath." "The law entered that the offence
might abound." "If there had been a law given which could have given life.,
verily righteousness should have been by the law. But the Scripture hath
concluded (shut up together) all under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus
Christ might be given to them that believe." I need not quote more than this.
But now, if such was the scope and object of the law, - if God by it
was seeking to produce conviction of a sinful and helpless condition, and to
cast men thus upon His mercy, - how simple that He should take up in it the
solemn reality of that death which had entered in by sin, and which was
constantly appealing to man in every possible way, - the broad seal of
condemnation - wide as humanity - upon the fallen creature! How irresistible
the conviction of what man was, and where he was, in the-eye of a holy God, if
He should come in and say to him, meaning just what it would mean when heard in
connection with the first threatening of death so literally carried out, "the
man that doeth these things shall live in them," "the soul that sinneth, it
shall die."
The strangeness of this interpretation to many is just its
perfect consistency with the whole design and meaning of the law. If no one
under it ever escaped death (with one exception evidently on another ground)
people think it impossible that death (in the ordinary sense) could have been
meant. They forget that no one ever did fulfil it, that there was none
righteous, no, not even one. How could they then escape it? And if God in the
law were not judging for eternity, but as a present thing, to cast men in the
conviction of their lost condition upon His mercy, how consistent with this
plan that He should make the judgment upon that condition a thing apparent to
every one under it, instead of something yet unseen, and which eternity alone
should too late reveal!
Had God said, as we have made Him say, "the
soul that sinneth shall die the second death," they might have com forted
themselves with the assurance that no one could know much about that, and
written placid lies upon the gravestones, and lost the whole reality of the
ruin they were in. Doubtless many did do so in spite of all, for light never
yet opened eyes closed to it, but still God had borne witness, none the less,
if they rejected it as men still reject, that they were fallen creatures, and
who had confirmed by their own act and deed the original sentence under which
they lay. Every white hair in a mans head, every wrinkle in his brow, was
thus Gods witness in a double way, a solemn appeal which one would think
irresistible. Death was not that for which man was created; no, it was God
"turning man to destruction." "Thou hast set our iniquities before Thee, our
secret sins in the light of Thy countenance. For all our days are passed away
in Thy wrath; we spend our years as a tale that is told. . . So teach us to
number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom" (Psa. xc. 8,. 9,12).
But not only in this way was mans lost condition manifest, but
the judgment of the law still left God free to the grace which was under the
veil, while yet the veil was not removed. Had God said, "The soul that sinneth,
it shall die the second death," none could contest with Him the justice of that
sentence; but surely it would seem to bind Him to eternal judgment, to
universal justice, but divorced from grace. As it was He did not bind Himself
so that to the broken and contrite He could not show mercy, outside of law and
its penalty altogether. It could do its work as convicting man of sin, and on
the ground of human effort and human righteousness shut him up in condemnation,
bring him to hopeless self-despair, and yet leave him in that world beyond the
grave into which the full light yet had not and could not come, to a mercy
which He could be free to exercise, where mans hope was in His mercy. It
could in short tie mans hands, as to all working out of claim upon God.
It could not tie Gods hands as to mercy shown to man.
As to the
fact itself, that the law does really speak of the first and not the second
death (and there is no death between) is a thing which, when we examine it,
seems impossible to question. That he that honored father and mother should
"live long in the land" of Canaan, is imbedded in the heart of the ten
commandments. And in Deut. iv. 40, where Moses is urging the people to keep
these very commandments, -what does he put before them as the result of their,
being kept, but "that it may go well with thee, and with thy children after
thee, and that thou rnayest prolong thy days upon the earth which the Lord thy
God giveth thee, forever."
Let any one who doubts read on and on
through the entire Pentateuch, if he will, and let him find if he can any
penalty pronounced, or any reward promised, of which he has got the least proof
that it refers to a future state at all. Doubtless death as the result of Him
who had created man turning Him to destruction cast its shadow over the state
beyond, which as certainly the people of the old dispensation had knowledge of.
That I have affirmed. It is the very thing which gives significance to it such
as I am speaking of. But everywhere the legal promise is a life of blessing in
the land and everywhere the legal curse is the perishing from the earth.
Pass on to the New Testament, and look at that which is the very
central feature in the whole scene, and what is the "curse of the law" which
the Lord of glory bore? "Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law,
being made a curse for us, as it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth
on a tree." The hanging on a tree was only the outward expression surely of the
curse, and not the whole thing; and so, as I have urged, is death. This is
death in its most shameful form; but it is not the second death, nor does the
law speak of that.
Mr. Constable has endeavoured to show that the Old
Testament announces death as the punishment of the wicked in the future state.
It is not to be supposed that he has brought forward the worst passages to
prove this position. Let us then see what he produces. He says -
"There
[in the Old Testament] the word must be taken in the sense God has stamped upon
it, and left unchanged. It is there over and over again described as the end,
in the future age, of obstinate transgressors. For such God declares He has
provided the instruments of death; of such as hate divine Wisdom
that Wisdom says, they that hate me love death; to the wicked God
saith, thou shalt surely die, the soul that sinneth it shall
die. "
He adds:
"No one, we suppose, will apply the death
pronounced in the above passages upon unrepented and unpardoned sin to that
death which all men alike, whether saved or lost, undergo as children of Adam.
They can only apply it to future punishment. Death, then, is, according to the
Old Testament, to be after judgment the result of sin, as life is the result of
righteousness."
I have shown how directly this doctrine is opposed to
Scripture. Death after judgment is Mr. Constables version; "after death
the judgment" is that of Scripture. And of course all he says upon this is his
own conjecture. What proof has he that this death is after judgment? None. What
proof that it is in the future state? None really. He has only a very weak
argument that all men alike, saved. or lost, undergo the first death. But does
he mean to say that it never comes upon men therefore as direct judgment for
sin? If so, he is at direct issue with fact and Scripture alike.
What
would he say, for instance, to these statements of Elihu? "He shall break in
pieces mighty men without number, and set others in their stead. Therefore He
knoweth their works, and He overturneth them in the night, so that they are
destroyed. He striketh them as wicked men in the open sight of others, because
they turned back from Him, and would not consider any of His ways" (Job xxxiv.
24-27).
Or again: "And if they he bound in fetters, and be holden in
cords of affliction; then He sheweth them their work, and their transgressions
that they have exceeded. He openeth also their ear to discipline, and
commandeth that they return from iniquity. If they obey and serve Him they
shall spend their days in prosperity and their years in pleasures; but if they
obey not, they shall perish by the sword, and they shall die without knowledge,
But the hypocrites in heart heap up wrath; they cry not when He bindeth them:
they die in youth, and their life is among the unclean" (xxxvi. 8-14; comp.
also xxxiii. 18-30).
This is indeed the great lesson of all this part
of Job. The thorough and complete exemplification of the principle we shall
shortly have occasion to consider, in that great day, the day of the Lord upon
the earth, when it shall be cleared by judgment that the meek may inherit it
(Psa. xxxvii). Of this the Old Testament is full, and the principle is, as we
have seen, the principle of the law; to substitute for it the New Testament
complete revelation is to lose the understanding of the old dispensation.
Strange as it may seem, and inconsistent too with the known belief of
the Jews before our Lords time, there is not really one passage in the
Old Testament in which either heaven is spoken of as the abode of the
righteous, or hell (in our present sense of it) as the abode of the lost. The
word "hell" is always in it that word "sheol" which we have already looked at,
and which is the equivalent of hades, "the unseen," and applied always and only
to the death state. This abundantly confirms the belief that the death
threatened, even to impenitence and unbelief, was death in our ordinary
understanding of it but death as the judgment of God, and throwing its awful
shadow over the eternity beyond. With this Mr. Constables texts
completely harmonize. Nor does he indeed attempt to show that the death they
speak of is judgment in a future state. It would be impossible for him to prove
this, for it is not true.
The legal dispensation was intended as a
means of reaching on a broad scale (and with a still broader after-purpose) the
consciences of men. It was part of a method of grace to prepare for the coming
Christ by convicting men of guilt and of helplessness, shutting them up to the
grace which was then to be revealed. And thus it was that there was a "due
time" for Christ to come, as the apostle declares; and that when this purpose
of the law should be accomplished. Thus "when we were yet without strength in
due time Christ died for the ungodly" (Rom. v. 6). In the meanwhile for
individual need was provided a way of cleansing and forgiveness (typical
largely, of necessity) in which broken and contrite souls found hope of mercy.
But the system was, as a whole, a ministration of. death and condemnation.
And for this purpose the death which was the broad seal of condemnation
upon universal man was taken up and used in the penal code of the divine
government in Israel: man thus having under his eyes a temporal retribution
which would witness to the most carnal Gods wrath upon sin, and his own
condition a sinner under it.
But that was not all the light shed upon
the future, and we must look at what yet remains in some little detail: first,
the prophetic landscape of the Old Testament, which is important many ways with
regard to our present subject, and then the meaning and character of its
typical teaching.
Go To Chapter Twenty Four
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