GENESIS IN THE
LIGHT OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
Section 2.
6. The Carnal and Spiritual Seed (Chap. iv., v.)
IN the second part of this series we have a mingled story
of two lives - of many individuals, but still only of two lives - essentially
contrasted with one another. It is already the commencing fulfillment of that
prophetic word which had spoken of the seed of the woman and the seed of the
serpent. The story belongs, not to one generation only, but to every generation
from that day to this; for while it is assuredly true that the real and
fundamental victory which insures every other is His to whom belongs in its
full sense the title of "Seed of the woman," yet it is true, too, that in every
generation the great opponents have their representatives among men, and the
conflict and the victory are in principle continually repeated. The world has
been from the beginning, as all history attests, a scene of unceasing strife;
but its strife has been very generally a hopeless contest of evil with evil;
for evil has no internal unity nor peace. Its elements may compact, but cannot
concord. "Corruption is in the world through lust," lust is its essential
feature, and we have had this already traced to its beginning in paradise
itself; but lust means strife, means war, the conflict of jarring interests,
each pursuing his own: "Whence come wars and fightings among you? Come they not
hence, even of your lusts, which war in your members?" In such a collision
there can be no true victory any where. Such history may fill mens
chronicles; with God it is a mere unmeaning blank.
Gods history
is but the tracing, amid this darkness, of one silver line of light, light come
into the world, a foreign element in it. With this the record of the six
days work begins: "Let there be light, and there was light." With this,
too, begins the story of that of which we have already seen these creative days
to be a type. We do not know how long the earth lay "waste and empty" under
darkness; we do know that for man not long was the darkness unbroken.
Gods word again brought in light, although light at first long struggling
with the darkness which it found; yet from the first Gods benediction was
its pledge of final victory. "Evening" might be, but not henceforth total
"night;" while each "morning," as it follows, presages and brings nearer the
full and perfect day, Gods Sabbath-rest, when darkness shall be gone
forever.
But here, then, is conflict, if mysterious, yet most real,
where there are victories to be recorded, and where, thank God, the final
victory is sure: a conflict just where the light is, and not elsewhere; a
conflict to which every human heart in which God has spoken that out of
darkness light may shine, is witness, and which is seen on a far grander scale
in the field of the world at large. It is to this that the chapters now before
us invite our attention; and as we shall see in these two spheres, where the
inner world of the heart is but the miniature representative of the world
without. We may see it more plainly if we trace it first upon the larger
scale.
Here the blood of righteous Abel speaks to us of what often
causes to the soul such deep perplexity, the apparent prevalence of evil over
good: a perplexity which is not removed until we see it as the law of the
conflict we have spoken of. The seed of the woman shall bruise the
serpents head; but then the serpent shall first bruise the heel of the
womans seed. This applies first of all and pre-eminently, as already
said, to Christ as the conqueror over mans mortal foe. In Abels
death we may thus see Christ, whose blood indeed speaks better things than that
of Abel, but of whom Abel is none the less, as the first martyr, dying at a
brothers hand, a perfect type.
If this be true, however, Cain must
be a picture especially of the people, Christs brethren, too, after the
flesh, at whose hand he really died; and here at once the whole type assumes
meaning and consistency.
Cain, then, is the Jew, the formal worshipper
of God, bringing the work of his hands, the fruit of his own toil, not doubting
that it ought to be accepted of God. Not irreligious, as men would say, he
ignores the breach that sin had caused between man and his Creator, but of
which the very toil whose fruit he brought was witness. So coming, he is
necessarily rejected of God; and such is Pharisaism, of whatever grade or time.
Just persons, having no need of repentance; diligent elder sons, serving the
Father, but without getting so much as a kid to make merry with their friends;
self-satisfied legalists, ignorant of God and grace: such is the Lords
picture of a generation of which Cain was prototype and father. Pharisees were
they, who always were most zealous for commandments and against Christ, a going
about to establish their own righteousness, and not submitting themselves to
the righteousness of God."
Abel, on the other hand, draws near to God,
bringing nothing of his own handiwork, but an innocent victim, a life taken
which no sin had stained or burdened, a sacrifice most unreasonable if it were
not faith. What pleasure could God take in death, or how could the death of a
guiltless substitute atone for the guilty? Thus man still reasons. But the very
folly of Abels sacrifice to the eye of reason should suffice to assure us
that he was not following the promptings of his own mind in it. His was not
will-worship, but faith; and if plainly the death of a beast could not take
away sin, his eye rested upon what that substitution foreshadowed. "By faith
Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain." And in this
he might well speak to us of Him who, not for Himself indeed, but as Man for
men, offered to God that one acceptable offering in which all others find their
consummation and their end.
"Witness" and "martyr" were from the
beginning one. The self-righteous heart of Cain resents the testimony to
mans guilt and God's provision for it, resents the testimony of God
Himself to the acceptance of Abel and his offering. In vain does God graciously
remonstrate with him; Abel is slain, and Cain goes out from the presence of the
Lord, not to be slain of man, but to be a fugitive and a vagabond upon the
earth.
How like the people who bought Aceldama with the blood of Christ
- " the potters field to bury strangers in"! for the whole earth has been
to them since then a strangers burial-ground. As a vessel marred upon the
wheel, they have been witnesses for Him in their rejection that they are but as
clay in the hands of Him against whom they have sinned.
Yet, though
wanderers upon the earth, the nation subsists; for He who has ordained their
punishment has also ordained its limit. They subsist with the mark of Cain upon
them, a people who strikingly fulfill the character of Cains progeny to
this day, away from the presence of Jehovah, according to one of their own
prophecies, "without a king, and without a prince, and without a sacrifice, and
without an image, and without an ephod, and without teraphim."
With
Lamech and his sons the line of Cain ends: one in whom self-will and impenitent
abuse of Gods long-suffering reach their height. A polygamist and
would-be homicide, his name speaks of the human "strength" in which he
rejoices, his wives names of the lust of eye and ear after which he goes, his
sons names and their inventions of how, then as now, a soul away from God
will use His creatures so as to be able to dispense with Him.* This is a
generation such as those of whom the Lord said, "The latter end is worse than
the beginning." With Cain, seven generations, and in the last still Cain, only
developed further: progress in a race away from God, who will possess
themselves of the earth in His despite, and be prosperous citizens in the land
of vagabondage.
* Lamech is "strong;" Adah, "ornament;" Zillah, "tinkling"
("music player" some interpret rather than translate it); Jabal, "the
traveller;" Jubal-"the trumpet-blast), Tubal Cain is variously rendered,
"worker in ore," "brass of Cain," "issue of Cain;" Naamab, "lovely."
Happily this is not all; nor is that which is of God, though down-trodden,
extinct upon earth. In Seth (appointed in the place of Abel, whom Cain slew) we
have its resurrection, and henceforth its perpetuation. The line of Cain
perished with the old world in the waters of the deluge; with Seth, God begins,
as it were, the race of man anew (chap. v.), Cain and the fall being now
omitted. Seth is the son of man, so to speak, in his likeness who was made in
the likeness of God and blessed. With Seth, there are nine generations unto
Noah, in whom once more the earth is also blessed: three triads, for God
manifests Himself in as well as to His people; at the end of the second of
which Enoch goes to heaven without seeing death, while Noah is Gods seed,
brought through the judgment to replenish and find his blessing on the earth
beyond. The Church of first-born ones and Israel find here very plainly their
representatives, to those who have learned from Scripture the respective
destinies of each. Fittingly, therefore, does Enoch become the earliest prophet
of the Lords approach (Jude 14.), while the days of Noah are expressly
likened, by the Lord Himself, to the time of the coming of the Son of Man.
The more we look, the more we shall see the force of the comparison. Infidelity
has invited our attention to a correspondence between the two lines of Cain and
Seth, and there is a certain correspondence which it will be well to examine.
The resemblance of some names pointed out is no doubt superficial; but there
are undoubtedly two Enochs and two Lamechs, and the latter close upon the end
of the old world. Of the two Enochs, all that is noted is but contrast. The
first gives his name to the city which Cain builds as it were in defiance of
his sentence, a city whose builder and maker God is not. Enoch, one of a line
which have no earthly history, walks with God, and is not, for God has taken
him. The two Lamechs have more in common, for alas! the separateness which at
first obtained between the worshippers of Jehovah and those in alienation from
Him narrowed as time went on. It was when Enos was born that men began to call
upon the name of the Lord, for "Enos" is "frail" or "mortal man," and those
content to bear that title learn the mercies of a covenant-keeping God. But as
time goes on, Lamech succeeds to Enos - strength to weakness, the world and the
Church approach; and thus Lamech, like his Cainite representative, has his
memorable saying also: pious, and largely true, but with one fatal flaw in it.
Lamech called his sons name "Noah, saying, This same
shall comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands because of the earth
which the Lord has cursed."
And the comfort came, and in Noah,
real blessing for the earth from God. Lamech was thus tar a true prophet; but
the people to whom he spoke, or the survivors of them, with their whole
posterity, save Noahs family alone, were all cut off by the flood that
preceded the blessing" Is there nothing similar now, when boundary lines are
nearly effaced, and the Church has shifted from the Enos to the Lamech-state,
and peace is preached in the assurance of good days coming, while intervening
judgment, universal for the rejecters of present grace, is completely ignored
and set aside?
Seths line has warning as well as comfort for us,
then; yet is it after all the line to which Gods promise and His blessing
cleave, and while the world profits naught by their inventions, it is beautitul
to see how He numbers up the years of their pilgrimage. With them alone there
is a chronology, for He who telleth the stars "numbers their steps" and
"telleth" even "their wanderings."
Thus far, then, as to the
interpretation of this primeval history as it applies to the larger scale of
the world around. But there is a world within which corresponds certainly not
less to what these types signify, and which lies apparently yet more within the
scope of these Genesis biographies. In this inner world, wherever God has
wrought, the same conflict is found, and subject to the same laws. Through
death, life; through defeat, victory.
In this sphere of the individual
experience the conflict is between two natures - the one which is ours as born
naturally; the other, as born of God supernaturally: and here, evidently, the
order is, "first, that which is natural, and afterward that which is
spiritual." The law of Genesis is thus that the elder gives place to the
younger. Cain represents, therefore, that in us which we rightly and
necessarily call "the old nature." His name signifies "acquisition,
possession;" Abels, "vapour, exhalation." The contrast between them
cannot be questioned, and was prophetic of their lives: Cain possessing himself
of that earth on which for mans sake the curse rested, while Abels
life exhaled to God like vapour drawn up by the sun. We may be very conscious,
as Christians, of these opposite tendencies: the "flesh," so designated because
in it man is sunk down from the spiritual being, which he was created, into
mere "body," as we may say or dust, while the new nature rises
Godward.
Not that the flesh cannot have a religion of its own. It can
bring its offering Cain-wise, the fruit of a toil which should convict it as
outside of paradise, and (expecting it to be received, of course,) be roused to
anger by not finding the tokens of acceptance which a mere prodigal, coming
home as that, obtains ; - the spirit of him who was, again, "the elder son,"
and who, while professing, "Lo, these many years do I serve thee, neither
transgressed I at any time thy commandments," had still to add, "and yet thou
never gavest me a kid, that I might make merry with my friends." How many of
those even in whom there is begun in the heart some true desire after God, are
yet destitute of all knowledge of acceptance with Him, because they are
endeavouring to approach Him after Cain's pattern, taking their own thoughts
instead of His! Faith still, taught of His Word, brings Abels offering -
the surrender of a life unstained by sin, and yielded therefore on account of
others, not its own; and faith is the character and expression of the new
nature: we are "all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus."
The
interpretation of the type runs smoothly so far. The difficulty will be for
most that Abel should die, and by his brothers hand - a difficulty quite
parallel to that which it represents, that when we have so begun to live, we
should find in practical experience a law of sin overmastering, death in the
place of life - "For I was alive without the law once, but when the commandment
came, sin revived, and I died." - " For sin, taking occasion by the
commandment, deceived me, and by it slew me.
Thus, while it is surely
true that the life which as children of God we partake of cannot be slain, it
is nevertheless true as to experience, from which side the type presents things
here, that it is after we have begun to live the true and eternal life we have
to learn what death is - to pass through the experience of it in our souls, and
learn deliverance from "the body of this death."
In the struggle with
evil, we too (though in a very different way from Him who alone is fully and
properly the womans seed) find victory from defeat. We need, on our own
account (as He did not) the humiliation of it. Jacob, though heir of blessing,
must halt upon his thigh before he can be Israel, a prince with God; and what
seems on the one side to be unredeemed evil and its triumph only, shall in
another be found the mighty and transforming touch of the "angel that redeems
from evil."
We must have the sentence of death in ourselves, that we may
not trust in ourselves, but in God that raiseth the dead. The possession of
life - of the new nature - is not power over sin; and this we have to learn,
that all "power is of God." Trust in a new nature which we have got is still
trust in ourselves as having got it; and self-confidence in whatever shape is
still a thing alienate from God, and to be broken down, not built up. We must
come to the self-despairing cry, "Who shall deliver me from the body of this
death?" before we can learn. as we shall then surely learn, to answer "I thank
God, through Jesus Christ our Lord." Thus Abel dies, and Cain lives and
flourishes; away from God indeed, but not permitted to be slain. The flesh
abides in us, though we are born again; we cannot destroy it when we gladly
would. Nay, we have, before we can find the fruit we seek for, to see the flesh
in its fruit, under its fairest forms, the evil thing it ever was. To its
seventh generation "that which is born of the flesh is flesh," from Cain to
Tubal-cain, "Cains issue." But then we have reached a new beginning, and
for other fruit find another tree - Seth appointed of God as a seed "in the
place of Abel, whom Cain slew."
Just so when the fruits of the flesh are
manifest, and we have proved the inefficacy of the right and good desires which
come of the new nature in us: when we have failed to work deliverance for
ourselves, and have had to cry in despair, "0 wretched man that I am! Who shall
deliver me from the body of this death?" we find the answer in a fruitful seed
bestowed in place of Abel - "I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord," and
the "law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus" makes us "free from the law of
sin and death;" - not "the life," but "the Spirit of life," - not our effort,
but divine might, - not self-occupation, but occupation with Him in whom we are
before God, and in whom the divine favour rests upon us full and constant as
upon Him (and because on Him) it rests. "I, yet not I, but Christ in me" This
is a second substitution which for deliverance it imports a soul to know: the
substitution of the power of the Spirit for the power of a right will and human
energy, the substitution therefore of occupation with Christ for occupation
with holiness; for then and thus alone is holiness attainable.
From
Seth, then, "Enos" springs.* We can take home the sentence of death; we can
glory in weaknesses, that the strength of Christ may rest upon us; and His
power known - the living God for us, as we find Him whom our weakness needs, we
"worship God in the Spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence
in the flesh." "Then began men" - from the birth of Enos - "to call upon the
name of the Lord."
And with Seth, Adams line begins afresh, as if
sin had never entered, as if it had never blotted the page of human history.
Like the genealogy in Luke, where, the Son of Man having come in, Adam again
shines forth in the brightness of his creation as "the son of God;" so here
begin once more "the generations of Adam," with no record of the fall to touch
the blessed fact that "in the day that God created man, in the likeness of God
made He him." No Cain, nor even Abel, enters here. The record is of a life in
all its generations not of this world, yet the days of which in the world God
numbers: a life which is fruitful, but whose fruit it is not yet the time to
show; a life to which alone is appended the record of a walk with God, and
which not only finds its home with God in Enoch, but with Noah also, in due
time, after the long-suspended judgment is poured out, inherits the earth also
by perpetual covenant of a covenant-keeping God.
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