Leaves From the
Book
THE PREFACE TO THE TRIAL BY
LAW:
ABRAHAM AND THE ABRAHAMIC COVENANT.
AN
important period comes now to be considered; not itself forming part of these
probationary ages, but having nevertheless the deepest significance in relation
to these. The trial by law, it is evident, was the fullest and most detailed
trial that man received; as it was the trial of the only religious system that
ever was the fruit of man's mind simply. We have seen it in principle already
in Cain - a mere natural man, of course; but the the believer also there are
thoughts of the natural mind which are no better. God, in the giving of law,
does not yet reveal His own way of blessing, but adopts, for the sake of
experiment, man's way; only supplying the needful conditions that the
experiment may be fully made, and the issue such as may not at all be
doubtful.
But in a case of this kind, special care would be needed also to
guard against the mistake, so sure otherwise to happen, of confounding this
adoption of man's way, for a certain purpose. with the acceptance of it by God
as the true one, and His own thought. This in fact has happened, because
unbelief in man can set aside the plainest testimonies that can be given: while
the systems which set these aside necessarily, in proportion as they do so,
deny the simple facts connected with the giving of the law, and which are
indeed part of a testimony which He has thus graven upon the history itself.
Thus those who affirm the law to be in any sense God's original thought have
endeavoured to prove, as it was needful to prove, its universality and its
existence from the beginning in a fallen world. Its universality,- for which
was God's way of blessing for man, could not according to His own design - shut
up from the mass, its existence from the beginning, partly for the same reason,
and partly because God's thought would surely be he one first announced by
Him.
To establish its universality, they have had to distinguish between a
written and an unwritten law or, as they assume to call it from Scripture, a
law written on the heart. What they mean is in fact conscience, an implicit law
which every one has, while the ten commandments are only its explicit form, and
as such given to Israel alone. In the same way they prove equally, as they
think, its existence from the beginning.
Scrripture refuses this, however,
utterly.The "Law written upon the heart" is only used of Israel's condition
when finally converted to God. It is one of the blessings of the new
covenant-''I will put Mv laws in their minds, and write them in their heart ''
words which prove conclusively that such a condition is not every man's natural
one, while in the passage in Romans often quoted, where at first sight a
similar term seems to be applied to the Gentiles, it is in reality a very
dilferent one : Which show, says the apostle. "the work of the law written
their hearts - not the law written, but its work written - as the
original text declares without any question. The work of the law is conviction
: conscience does this work in the one who has not the law. though far less
completely - "By the law is the knowledge of sin" and this knowledge conscience
in measure gives to every one and in that respect they, "having no law," as the
Revised Version gives it. ''are a law unto themselves" Had they a law, they
would not be a law unto themselves.
There is no escape from the plain
statement of Scripture, that the law written on the heart is conversion and not
the natural state; and that if it were, God could not promise to write it for
those who already had it written in them. Positive, too, is the statement that
the Gentiles had "no law." But beside all this, the introduction of law at the
beginning in a fallen world is the subversion of the whole argument of the
apostle (Gal. iii.17), that "the covenant, which was confirmed before of God in
Christ [or rather "to Christ "], the law, which was four hundred and thirty
years after, could not disannul, that it should make the promise of no effect."
For "though it be a man's covenant, if it be confirmed, no man disannulleth or
addeth thereunto"
He here shows one of the meanings of this Abrahamic period
preceding the dispensation of law. No less than four centuries does God require
to put between the promise of grace to Abraham and his seed and the legal
covenant between Himself and Israel, to prevent the one being confounded with
or added to the other. And the importance of this will be seen, when we compare
the real universality of the first with the restricted bearing of the second.
"In thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed," God says to Abraham,
speaking to him as the pattern man of faith, the "father of all them that
believe." For "they which are of faith," says the apostle, "the same are the
children of Abraham." And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would "justify the
heathen (the nations) through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham,
saying, 'In thee shall all nations be blessed.' So then," he adds, "they which
be of faith are blessed with faithful (or rather, "believing ") Abraham."
Thus God had proclaimed, centuries before the law, that the Gentiles should be
blessed upon the principle of faith. Even as, long after the law was given, He
had declared by Habakkuk that "the just shall live by faith." "And," adds the
apostle again, "the law is not of faith; but the man that doeth them shall live
in them '"- an entirely different and conflicting principle.
Even thus far
it is plain that, as God's universal way of blessing, the gospel had possession
of the field before the law came in at all. But God would make it more evident;
and He confirms this covenant of promise (really) to Christ, when He afterward
adds, "In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed." This is of
course the completion (and therefore confirmation) of the former promise; and
its full significance is seen in connection with that offering up of Isaac, and
receiving him back (in figure) from the dead, which so plainly find their
antitype in Christ's sacrificial death and resurrection. The true Isaac is that
One Seed, as the apostle points out, "to whom the promise was made." If "in
thee showed that the blessing was to be by faith, "in thy seed" reveals the
object of faith, the Person and work through whom alone the blessing of all
nations could in fact come.
Law is excluded from this covenant of promise.
It has absolutely no place there. And what proves this, according to the
apostle, is just the fact of its having been made and confirmed of God four
huundred and thirty years before the Sinaitic. Even a man's covenant made and
confirmed cannot be reopened to insert new conditions. How simply impossible,
then, to add the law as a condition to the covenant of grace! Theological
systems would come in here to assure us, however, that the law was written upon
man's heart from the beginning, and thus upset altogether the apostle's
reasoning. Instead of grace having priority of law, as he affirms, according to
these, it is the law that has the priority. Either he or they, then, must be in
error.
In the epistle to the Romans also he speaks of a time before law.
"For until the law," he says,- or rather, "until law" - "sin was in the world."
Law did not introduce it therefore, he means to say; but again they would
correct him: according to them, there was no time "until" - that is, before
law. And some would doubtless quote the next words of the apostle in proof:
"But sin is not imputed where there is no law." The mistake is in supposing
"imputing" here to be the same thing as elsewhere in the epistle; it is in
reality a different word:
"sin is not put in account" (as the different
items of a bill,) is the true thought. Sin is not put in account where there is
no law; nevertheless death reigned "- proving that sin was "imputed,"from Adam
to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's
transgression." For Adam had "transgressed;" he had overstepped a positive law
under which he was. "From Adam to Moses" is just the time of the most part of
the Genesis history; it is the time until law, when sin was already in the
world, but when it had not as yet this aggravation. The supposition - for it
has been supposed - that infants are in question "from Adam to Moses," is
scarcely deserving a refutation. It is not true, then, that the law given at
Sinai was only the explicit announcement of what had been implicitly in
existence from the beginning; but on the contrary, law, as a principle of God's
dealings in a fallen world, came in then. It is what He was forced into (to
speak after the manner of men), rather than desired. Abel, in the world before
the flood, declared what was His way from the beginning; and this Noah's altar
proclaimed again as His, when those waters had scarcely dried from off the face
of the new world.
In this prefatory period of which we are now speaking,
the types of the law and its significance the apostle has taught us to find in
Abraham's history. How suited their place there should be surely evident. Hagar
is thus the "covenant" from the Mount Sina, which gendereth to bondage," and
every detail of her history is, I am assured, luminous in this way. That she is
but handmaid to Sarah, the covenant of grace, every one owns, of course.
Sarah's name is "Princess," for "grace reigns." Hagar is an Egyptian, child of
fallen nature; and her name is "Fugitive," for, alas! the natural effort now is
to get away from God. She is fleeing toward Egypt when the angel finds her at
Lahai-roi; and when dismissed with her child in obedience to the divine
command, again we find her gravitating toward Egypt. How plainly is it taught,
thus, that the law is characterized by "the elements of the world," with which
the apostle connects it in Galatians! As a principle, it is man's way, not
God's; as specific commandment, holy, just, and good; and in His intent in
giving it, surely worthy every way of Him. These things alter in no wise the
fact that it is man's way - his experiment with himself - taken up by God, and
worked out, in His own perfect manner, to a true result.
Thus it should be
very plain why Hagar is first found by God in relation to Abram, manifestly his
own shift, through little faith, to obtain the promised and desired fruit.
Finding her thus, He appears to her at the well Lahai-roi, and sends her back
to submit herself (mark) into her mistress's hands, and to allow the trial
already begun to be fully wrought. But while He allows it, He does not leave
the issue for a moment doubtful. The fruit of law is the natural fruit. Ishmael
shall be born, hut be only the "wild-ass man"- untamed, untamable flesh.
Abraham thus exhibits in his own history the lesson which afterward, for so
many centuries, his posterity were set to learn. In his own person, he is the
witness of Sovereign, electing grace; called out of the darkness of heathenism,
as Joshua reminds the men of his generation -"Your fathers dwelt on the other
side of the flood in old time, even Terah, the father of Abraham and the father
of Nahor; and they served other gods." Here, "the God of glory appeared unto"
him, and called him from country, kindred, and father's house, to be the
special witness of His name and way.
Before Hagar appears in the history,
God gives testimony to Abram, as a man righteous through faith; and it is
instructive to see how the apostle, when he brings Abram before us as the
pattern man of faith, passes over all the time of his connection with her as so
much loss. "Who against hope believed in hope, that he might become the father
of many nations, according to that which was spoken, So shall thy seed be. And
being not weak in faith, he considered not his own body now dead, when he was
about a hundred years old, neither yet the deadness of Sarah's womb: he
staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith,
giving glory to God; and being fully persuaded that what He had promised, He
was able also to perform. And therefore it was imputed to him for
righteousness."
In the last words, the apostle seems to ignore the facts of
history; for Abram's body was not yet dead when God said to him, "So shall thy
seed be," and when his faith was first counted for righteousness. It was after
this - probably some time after - that Ishmael was born; and he was thirteen
years old at the time of which the epistle to the Romans speaks. All these
fifteen years or more the apostle treats as so much lost time, to bring
together the period in which he is first spoken of as having the righteousness
of faith, and that when he received the covenant of circumcision as the " seal"
of that righteousness. Circumcision means, as the same apostle elsewhere tells
us, the "putting off of the body of the flesh;" and they are the "true
circumcision" who "have no confidence in the flesh." God Himself thus brings
these two periods together; and circumcision is seen to be indeed, as the Lord
says, "not of Moses." In its spiritual meaning, it is the fundamental opposite
of law.
How fully in all this the character and purpose of this
intermediate time comes out! Even the natural seed - Israel after the flesh -
will find their blessing in the end from God according to the grace of the
Abrahamic covenant, and not according to the Sinaitic,- the only one according
to which they have yet received the land. The Abrahamic covenant will thus be
in very deed to them a "new covenant." Thus grace still as a nation holds them
fast, as it ever has, for future blessing,- a blessing which, when it comes,
will alone be the proper fulfillment of the "covenant of promise."
Isaac,
Jacob, and Joseph give us, as types, yet further lessons. Isaac shows us the
Seed through whom alone the blessing can come; Jacob, the immediate father of
the twelve tribes, in both his character and history, foreshadows theirs; and
Joseph, rejected by his brethren, and yet at last received perforce as their
saviour and lord, shows in so plain a way their history in respect of One
infinitely greater that it needs no insisting on. For our present purpose,
enough has been already said to prove how, in this period prefatory to the law,
the law itself is guarded from misconception, and grace is declared God's way,
and only way, of blessing for man. Even for Israel, God's covenant is the
covenant of circumcision.
Carnality and unbelief, stopping at the outside,
may misread all this from first to last. If those misread it, for whom has come
the full and final revelation, "the veil is upon their hearts."
THE
AGE OF LAW
IN taking up the lessons of the dispensation of law, we must
carefully distinguish two different and, in many respects, contrasted elements.
As a trial of man, which, in the highest degree, it was, we have already seen
it to be the working out (in a divine way, and therefore to a true result) of
an experiment which was oman's thought, not God's. God could not need to make
an experiment. Man needed it, because he would not accept God's judgment,
already pronounced before (as a fallen being) he had been tried at all, in the
proper sense of trial; "every imagination of the thoughts of his heart is only
evil, and that continually." God's way of acceptance for him had been,
therefore, from the beginning, by sacrifice, in which the death of a substitute
covered the sinner before Him, closing his whole responsibility naturally - in
the place in which he stood as a creature. The "way of Cain" was man's
resistance to the verdict upon himself, and so to the way of grace proclaimed.
God then undertook to prove him, taking him on his own ground, and bidding him
justify his own thoughts of himself by actual experiment.
But this is only
the law on one side of it. It was what made it law, and gave its character to
the whole dispensation. Yet underneath, and in spite of all this, God
necessarily kept to and maintained His own way, and to the ear of faith told
out, more and more, that way of His, although in "dark Sayings," from which
only Christianity has really lifted off the veil. Thus, and thus alone, a
sacrificial worship was incorporated with the law, and circumcision, "a seal of
the righteousness of faith," remained as the entrance into the new economy.
First, then, let us look at the law as law, and afterward as a typical
system.
As law, or the trial of man, we find him put in the most favourable
circumstances possible for its reception. The ten commandments appeal, at the
very outset, to the fact of the people having been brought out of the land of
Egypt; it was He who had brought them out who bade them "have no other gods"
before Him. He had made Himself known in such a way as to manifest Himself God
over all gods, His power being put forth in their behalf, so as to bind them by
the tie of gratitude to Himself. How could they dispute His authority, or doubt
His love? His holiness, too, was declared in a variety of precepts, wilich, if
burdensome as ceremonial, appealed even the more powerfully on that account to
the very sense of the most careless-hearted. There were severest penalties for
disobedience, but also rewards for obedience, of all that man's heart sinlessly
could enjoy. The providence of God was made apparent in continual miracles, by
which their need in the wilderness was daily met. Who could doubt, and who
refuse, the blessing of obedience to a law so given and so sanctified?
A
wall of separation was built up between them and the nations round; and inside
this inclosure the divinely guarded people were to walk together, all evil and
rebellion excluded, the course of the world here set right, all ties of
relationship combining their influence for good; duty not costing aught, but
finding on every side its sweet, abundant recompense. Who, one would think,
could stumble? and who could stray?
Surely the circumstances here were as
favourable as possible to man's self-justification under this trial, if justify
himself he could. If he failed now, how could he hope ever to succeed? That he
did fail, we all know - openly and utterly he failed, not merely by unbidden
lusts, which his will refused and denied, but in conscious, deliberate
disobedience, equal to his father Adam's, and that before the tables of the law
had come down to him out of the mount into which Moses had gone up to receive
them.
The first trial of law was over. Judgment took its course, although
mercy, sovereign in its exercise, interposed to limit it. Again God took the
people up, upon the intercession of Moses-type of a greater and an effectual
Mediator. Man was ungodly, but was hope irrecoverably gone? Could not mercy
avail for man in a mingled system from which man's works should at least not
wholly be excluded?
Now this, in fact, is the great question under law:
rigidly enforced, it is easily allowed that man must fail, and be condemned. He
does not love his neighbour as himself, still less love God with all his soul
and strength. Is there nothing short of this that God can admit, then? He can
show mercy; can He not abate something of this rigor, and give man opportunity
to repent, and recover himself? And this is the thought that underlies much
that is mistaken for the gospel now. A new baptism may give it a Christian
name, and yet leave it unregenerate legalism after all. For this - only
correcting some mistakes - is what the second giving of the law takes up. It is
an old experiment, long since worked out, an anachronism in Christian times.
"The law is not of faith;" these are two opposite principles, which do not
modify, but de-stroy, one another.
A second time the tables of the law are
given to Israel; and now, along with this, God speaks of and declares the mercy
which He surely has: "The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious,
long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, forgiving inquity,
transgression, and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty." It is the
conjunction of these two things that creates the dif-ficulty. We recognize the
truth of both, but how shall they unite in the blessing of man? This doubt
perplexes fatally all legal systems. How far will mercy extend? and where will
righteousness draw the line beyond which it cannot pass? How shall we reconcile
the day of grace and the day of judgment? The true answer is, that under law no
reconciliation is at all possible. The experiment has been made, and the result
proclaimed. It is of - the law thus given the second time, and not the first,
that the apostle asserts that it is the "ministration of death" and "of
condemnation."
One serious mistake that has to be rectified here is, that
the law can be tolerant to a certain (undefined) measure of transgression. It
is not so. It is not on legal ground that God "forgives iniquity,
transgression, and sin." The law says, "Cursed is every one that continueth not
in all things written in the book of the law to do them." If on other ground
(in this case, as ever, that of sacrifice,) mercy can be extended, and even
forgiveness,- if man be permitted to cancel the old leaf and turn over a new,
yet the new must be kept unbiotted, as the old was not. "When the wicked man
turneth away from his wicked-ness," he must do that which is lawful and right,"
to "Save his soul alive." And thus the commandments, Written the second time
upon the tables of stone, though now by the mediator's hand, were identical
with the first. Here, the law cannot give way by a jot or a tittle, and
therefore man's case is hopeless. The law is the ministration of condemnation
only.
That was the foreseen issue, and the divine purpose in it, and God,
to make that issue plain, (that man might not, unless he would, be a moment
deceived as to it) lets Moses know, as the people's representative, that His
face cannot he seen. He does indeed see the glory after it has passed - His
back parts, not His face. God is unknown: there is no way to clear the guilty,
and therefore none by which man may stand before Him.
Thus the law, in any
form of it, is the "ministration of condemnation" only. That it was the
"ministration of death" also, implies its power, not to produce holiness, but,
as the apostle calls it, "the strength of sin." His experience of it-" I was
alive without the law once; but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I
died." Forbidding lust, it aroused and manifested it. "Sin, taking occasion by
the commandment, wrought in me all manner of lust "- thus "deceived me, and by
it slew me."
Of this state of hopeless condemnation and evil, that physical
death which God had annexed to dispbedience at the first was the outward
expression and seal. In it, man, made like the beasts that perish, passed out
of the sphere of his natural responsibility and the scene for which he had been
created, and passed out by the judgment of God, which cast, therefore, its
awful shadow over all beyond death. The token of God's rejection of man as
fallen is passed upon all men everywhere, with but one exception in the ages
before Moses. Enoch had walked with God, and was not, for God took him. That
made it only the plainer, if possible, what was its significance. It was actual
sentence upon man for sin, and all men were under it as sentenced,- not under
probation.
If God, therefore, took up man to put him under probation, as in
the law He manifestly did, He must needs conditionally remove the sentence
under which he lay. "The man who doth these things shall live in them" meant,
not that he should die, and go to heaven, as people almost universally
interpret it, but the contrary - that he should recover the place from which
Adam had fallen, and stay on earth. Faith in Abraham, indeed, looked forward to
a better country - that is, a heavenly. But the law is not of faith, nor was
Abraham under it. Faith, owning man's hopelessness of ruin, was given in
measure to prove the mystery of what, to all else, were God's dark sayings. To
man as man, resisting God's sentence upon himself, the law spoke, not of death,
and a world beyond, (which he might, as he listed, people with his own
imaginings,) but of the lifting off of the sentence under which he lay - of the
way by which he could plead his title to exemption from it.
Thus the issue
of the trial could not be in the least doubtful. Every grey hair convicted him
as, under law, ruined and hopeless. Every furrow on his brow was the
confirmation of the old Adamnic sentence upon himself per-sonally; and the law,
in this sense also, was the ministration of death, God using it to give
distinct expression to what the fact itself should have graven upon men's
consciences. It is this (so misunderstood as it is now) that gives the key to
those expressions in the Psalms and elsewhere which materialism would pervert
to its own purposes: "For in death there is no remembrance of Thee; in hades
who shall give Thee thanks?"
God would have it so plain, that he might run
that readeth it, that upon the ground of law, spite of God's mercy (which He
surely has), man's case is hopeless. 'By deeds of law shall no flesh be
justified in His sight; for by the law is the knowledge of sin." Yet, God
having declared His forgiveness of iniquity, transgression, and sin, the second
trial by law could go on, as it did go on, for some eight hundred years, till
the Babylonish captivity. Then the regal covenant really ended. The people were
Lo-ammi, a sentence never yet recalled.
As law simply, then, the Mosaic
system was the complete and formal trial of man as man; all possible assistance
being given him, and every motive, whether of self-interest or of gratitude to
God, being brought to bear on him; the necessity of faith almost, as it might
seem, set aside by repeated manifestations of Jehovah's presence and power,
such as must force conviction upon all,
The issue of the trial, as foreseen
and designed of God, was to bring out the perfect hopelessness of man's
condition, as ungodly, and without strength, unable to stand - before Him for a
moment. But then, the truth of his helplessness exposed, the mercy of God could
not permit his being left there without the assurance of effectual help
provided for him. In this way, another element than that of law entered into
the law, and the tabernacle and temple services, taking up the principles of
circumcision and of sacrifice (of older date than law) incorporated them in a
ritual of most striking character, which spread before the eye opened to take
it in lessons of spiritual wisdom, which in our day we turn back to read with
deeper interest and delight the more we know of them.
The language of type
and parable God had used from the beginning. As yet, He could not speak plainly
of what filled His heart ever, as these bear abundant witness. Unbelief in man
had dammed back the living stream of divine goodness, which was gathering
behind the barrier all the while for its overflow. In the meanwhile, the Psalms
- the very heart of the Old Testament - declare what faith could already
realize of the blessedness of "the man whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose
sins are covered." Faith tasted and declared, as the apostle could take up such
words afterward, to show, not the blessedness of keeping law, but of divine
forgiveness. "It shall be forgiven him" was indeed said, with perfect
plainness, in connection with that shedding of blood for man, which testified
at once to his utter failure, and of resource in God for his extremest need. It
was not, and could not be, perfect peace or justification that could yet be
preached or known, but a "forbearance," of which none could predict the limits.
Still, faith had here its argument, and, in fact, found ever its fullest
confidence sustained.
Very striking it is, when once this dealing of God
with faith is seen, how the very burdensomeness of the rigid ceremonial changes
its charater, and becomes only the urgency of an appeal to the conscience,
which, if entertained, would open the way to the knowledge of the blessedness
of which the psalmist speaks. These continual sacrifices, if they did indeed,
as the apostle urges, by their frequent repetition, proclaim their own
insufficiency, nevertheless, by the very fact, became continual preachers, in
the most personal way, to the men of Israel, of their ruin, and of its sole
remedy. How the constant shedding of blood would keep them in mind of that
divine commentary, "For the life of the flesh is in the blood; and I have given
it to you upon the altar, to make atonement for your souls: for it is the blood
that maketh an atonement for the soul." (Lev. xvii. ii.) How striking, too,
that circumcision, which was clearly before the law, was expressly the only way
by which even the Israelite-born could claim Jehovah as his covenant-God, or
keep the memorial feast of national redemption! For, as the apostle says, it
was "the seal of the righteousness of faith," not law-keeping, as the covenant
of which it was the token was "of promise "-the promise of an "almighty God,"
when in Abraham, almost a hundred years old, all natural hope was dead forever.
To walk before that omnipotent God in confessed impotence, trusting and proving
His power, was that to which he was called. As yet, there was no law to saddle
that with conditions; and in memory of this, in token of its abiding
significance, the Gentile "stranger" could still be circumcised, with all his
males, and keep the passover as an Israelite-born.
How tender, too, the
goodness which had provided that -whoever of Abraham's seed should turn to the
history of - his forefather after the flesh, should find written there, - and
of this very depositary of all the promises, such plain, unambiguous words of
divine testimony as these: "He believed in the Lord, and He counted it to him
for righteousness." Of no other was this in the same way written. What hand
inscribed it therein just where it should speak most plainly, and to those most
in need? Just where, on the incoming of Christianity, it should be ready with
its unmistakable testimony to the central principle of Christianity itself.
Such is the prophetic character of the inspired Word. The same presaging Spirit
who dictated to Peter - in men's thoughts, the first authority in the church -
those two doctrines which are the death-blow of ritualism, new birth through
the word of the gospel, and the common priesthood of all believers (i Pet.
23-25; ii. 5-9), recorded by Moses this testimony as to Abraham. Blessed be God
for His infinitely precious Word!
It was in connection with law that all
the books of the Old Testament were given, and Israel, as is plain, were they
to whom all was committed. It seems, therefore, here the place to speak briefly
of their general character as aff ted by this. There are certain things, at
least, that o e may indicate as of special importance, in view of many things
around us at the present time.
In the first place, it was not yet the time
for that "plainness of speech " which, as the apostle says, belongs to
Christianity. This we have already seen, but it is not superfluous to insist on
it still further. The veil between man and God neccessitated a veiled speech
also - not, indeed, altogether impenetrable to faith, but requiring, in the
words of Solomon, "to understand proverb and strange speech, the words of the
wise and their dark sayings. Even as to man himself, while his trial was yet
going on, there could not be the full discovery of his condition. We have not
yet the New Testament doctrine of "the flesh," nor of new birth, although there
was that which should have prepared an Israelitish teacher for the
understanding of it when announced. Election was only yet national, not
individual, and therefore to privilege only, not eternal life. Adoption, too,
was national: the true children of God could not yet claim or know their place
as such. No cry of "Abba, Father," was or could be raised. The heirs differed
not as yet from servants, being under tutors and governors until the time
appointed of the Father. (Gal. iv.) As to all these things, there were
preparatory utterances, and all the more as the ruin of man came out,
therefore, in those prophetical books which fittingly closed the canon of the
Old Testament.
Even the types had in them the character which the apostle
ascribes to the law: "having a shadow of good things to come, but not the very
image of the things." The unrent veil, the repetition of the sacrifices, the
successional priesthood, as he points out, had all this character. They were
the necessary witnesses that the "law made nothing perfect,"-that under it "the
way into the holiest was not yet made manifest." Of these was the intermediate
priesthood of Aaron's sons, which was the provision for a people unable
themselves to draw near to God; which, with all else, the Judaizing ritualism
of the day copies, and maintains as Christian. The apostle's answer to it is,
"By one offering He hath perfected for, ever them that are sanctified. Whereof
the Holy Ghost also is a witness to us; for after that He had said before,
'Their sins and iniquities will I remember no more.' Now where remission of
these is, there is no more offering for sin. Having, therefore, brethren,
boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living
way, which He hath consecrated for us through the veil, that is to say, His
flesh, and having a High-Priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a
true heart, in full assurance of faith." (Heb. X. 14-22.) Sin put away, and
distance from God removed, ritualism, in all its forms, becomes an
impossibility.
In the second place, as the law dealt with man here and now,
and did not relegate the issue of its own trial to another time and place,
where its verdict could not be known by men in this life; the earth is that
upon which man's attention is fixed, and that whether for judgment or reward.
There are hints here also of the fuller truths which the New Testament unfolds;
but manifestly there is no promise of heaven to the keeper of the law, nor even
threat of hell - that is, of the lake of fire - to the transgressors of it.
Judgment there is, and eternal judgment, but death is rather the stroke of it -
the horror of this shadowing the eternity beyond. Job speaks of resurrection,
and the prophets also, though in them it is only applied figuratively to
national restoration; yet this shows they held it as admitted truth. Outside of
the Old Testament we learn, from the epistle to the Hebrews, that the
patriarchs expected "a better country - that is, a heavenly;" but we should not
know it from Genesis. Faith penetrated, in some measure, it is clear, the "dark
sayings," and found all not dark. A recognized body of truth was received by
the Pharisees, which embraced, not only resurrection for the just, but of the
unjust also, and spoke, not merely of hades, but of gehenna also - the true
hell.
This only makes the more remarkable the constant style even of the
prophets. The confounding of judgments upon the living, by which the earth will
be rid of its destroyers and prepared for blessing, with the judgment of the
dead at the "great white throne," is one of the errors under which
annihilationism shelters itself most securely. On the other hand, this earthly
blessing, still further confused by Israel being (as commonly) interpreted to
mean the Church, has been by current "adventism" made to take the place of the
true Christian expectation of an inheritance in heaven. And this, too, has
linked itself with annihilationism in its extremest and most materialistic
forms. We must keep the stand-points of the Old and New Testaments - of Israel
and the Church, earthly and heavenly - clear in our minds, and there is no
difficulty. "My kinsmen according to the flesh," says the apostle; "to whom
pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of
the law, and the service of God, and the promises." (Rom. ix. 3, 4.) All of
these for them earthly blessings. Christians are "blessed with all spiritual
blessings in heavenly places in Christ Jesus." (Eph. i. 3.)
If this should
seem at all to take the Old Testament away from us who belong to another
dispensation, we must remember two things: first, that if it has not so
directly to do with us, it has, most assuredly, with Christ no less on that
account. His glories run through the whole; history, psalm, and prophecy are
full of Him. But what reveals Him is ever of truest blessing for the soul. Oh
to be simpler in taking in all this, in which the Father gives us communion
with His own thoughts of His Son! And then, when we look at the typical
teaching, now fully for the first time disclosed, when even the things that
happened to the favoured nation, and are recorded in their history, "happened
to them for types," we find what is in the fullest way ours -"written for our
admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages are come." (i Cor. x. ii.) How
wonderful this! and how sad to think, on the one hand of the disuse, on the
other of the reckless abuse, of that precious teaching
We have now look at
the history of the age of law.
History of the Age of
Law
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