Miscellaneous
Writings Vol. Two
CHAPTER V.
CHRISTIAN SECURITY AND ITS MORAL
RESULTS.
"SALVATION!" "Saved !" 0 blessed, peace-inspiring words to
him who knows the reality of them! What do they mean? Do they leave still the
doubt that after all by that from which we are saved we may still be overtaken,
overcome, and perish? Then, for pity's sake, and in the interests of truth
itself, let us not use the words,- let us not inspire a hope which may be so
mistaken!
But Scripture, which uses the words, is not responsible for
the doubt, preaches not the uncertainty. Its "hope" is not one which possibly
may make ashamed; therefore there is patience in it: "If we hope for that we
see not, then do we with patience wait for it." We can wait with patience just
because it is sure. "He is faithful who promised." Yes, He is faithful, but we?
Well, when we came, helpless and hopeless, to Him, was it not just part of our
intense misery that we could not trust in ourselves? Had He not to teach us
that faith's object was not ourselves, but Himself? that every particle of
self-trust was only robbing Him by so much of His due? But are we now as
Christians to go back to that principle from which we were delivered?
Not so ! "This is the right gospel frame of obedience: so to work as if we were
only to be saved by our own merits; and withal so to rest on the merits of
Christ as if we had never wrought any thing." (p. 142.) Yes; but if indeed we
had never wrought any thing, would we be entitled to "rest in Christ "? Ah,
that would be perilously near to antinomianism, would it not? For we are to be
justified at last by works altogether, are we not? How then rest in Christ as
if we had done nothing?
Nay, is not fear - fear lest we should perhaps
be lost - a wholesome and needed motive to work? Is it not the check that the
Arminian has to deter him from sin, that he "is told that the holiest saint on
earth may fall from grace and drop into hell "? And do you not say that "human
nature at its best estate can never be safely released from the salutary
restraint of fear"? (p. 86.) How then can we rest in Christ as if we were not
doing what if we did not, we should assuredly "drop into hell "?
I see
you confess it is "a difficult thing" to unite these things together. (p. 142.)
And I note too that you say elsewhere, "Nor are true believers, who have
received the Spirit of adoption, under the law as the impulse to service. They
are not spurred on to activity by the threatened penalties of God's law. Love
to the Law-giver has taken the place of the fear of the law as a motive. This
is specially true of those advanced believers out of whom perfect love has cast
out all servile, tormenting fear." Yet you add, "Before emerging into this
experience, there is a blending of fear and love as motives to service. But the
law is put into the heart of the full believer, and its fulfillment is
spontaneous and free." (p. io8.)
Why do you say, "Into the heart of the
full believer"? Is not that one of the promises of the new covenant? Is it not
true in principle of all those, therefore, of whom God says at the same time,
"And I will be their God, and they shall be My people and again, "Their sins
and iniquities will I remember no more "? Why, then, do you insert this "full"
believer? Is it on the warrant of Scripture, or of experience?
But how
is it, then, that "human nature at its best estate can never be safely released
from the salutary restraint of fear "?
And how can you say of the greater
number even of believers, they are "not spurred on by the threatened penalties
of God's law "? and "they are not under the law as an impulse to service "?
Yet it seems that they are exposed to these penalties, or the possibility of
them ; that they are (most of them) under the fear of these that it is a
salutary thing and that they need the spur!
Truly it is a difficult thing
to unite these things together.
I do not forget that you tell us that "we
are freed from the law as a ground of justification. Our ground of
justification is the blood of Christ shed for us." This we might rejoice in if
you had not before defined this that "all mankind are, by the atonement,
forever freed from the necessity of pleading that we have perfectly kept the
law in order to acceptance with God." (p. 108.) And you have given us elsewhere
the "evangelical form in which it was defined by His adorable Son, "Thou shalt
love God with all thy heart, and thy neighbour as thyself." (p. 4!.) Thus, it
seems, Christ's work has put us under the milder condition of only loving God
with all our heart, and our neighbour as ourselves. This you call "the
evangelic form." The Lord justifies us, then, by His blood (correct me, if I
should misunderstand you), and puts us under this milder law - the law of
Christ, to be judged by; and you say that in the day of judgment we shall "be
judged by works only" (p. 29), so that the blood of Christ shed for us will not
be the ground of justification then. This is "salvation," as you say, "not by
the merit of works, but by works as a condition."(p.45.)
Now if this be
so, there are some serious questions,which a good many beside myself would
probably like to have answered.
(1) Is it to be shown that we have obeyed
this law perfectly?
(2) If so, for how long ?- from the time of our
justification? or how much later?
(3) If not perfectly, howfar perfectly?
where shall the all-important line be drawn?
(4) If the day of judgment is
to decide where we are, for whom is it to decide it? Not for God; that cannot
be. For ourselves? then can we be sure before it comes? or is it decided before
it is decided?
Surely a thing of such solemn moment should not be left with
so much haze upon it. Nor can you say that Scripture has left it in this
condition. Scripture, blessed be God! is as plain as possible. It is theology
only that is responsible for it all.
We know, then, how far our freedom
from the law as a ground of justification goes. It certainly does not go far
enough to entitle any one to rest wholly in Christ in view of eternity. Faith
in Dr. Steele is, I doubt not, better than his creed, but it is the creed we
are speaking of. After all, the great thing is, What says Scripture? And here
we are in another atmosphere, and under clear and luminous skies. "He that
heareth My words, and believeth on Him that sent Me," saith the Lord, "hath
everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but is passed out of death
into life." (Jno.v.) It will not do to say, even with Alford (p. 88), "comes
not into (krisis) separation, the damnatory part of the judgment." Krisis is
the common word for "judgment," as every one who knows Greek knows. Dean Alford
is interpreting, not translating; and even his interpretation does not avail.
For "separation" in this sense would apply to the whole judgment-work, not
necessarily to any damnatory part. But we are not left to argument. How are the
dead saints raised? The apostle answers : "So also is the resurrection of the
dead : it is sown in corruption ; it is raised in incorruption ; it is sown in
dishonour ; it is raised in glory ; it is sown in weakness ; it is raised in
power ; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body." (i Cor. XV.
42-44.) Now it is beyond controversy, that he is speaking here simply of the
resurrection of the saints. How are they raised? I ask. In incorruption, power,
and glory, are they not? And "in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the
last trump, . . the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed
"- the living (v. 52).
When shall this be? "Every man in his own
order," adds the apostle, "Christ the first-fruits; afterward, they that are
Christ's, at His coming" (v. 23).
And again: "For this we say unto you
by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain to the coming of
the Lord shall not prevent (go before) them which are asleep ; for the Lord
Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel
and the trump of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise first ; then we which
are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to
meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we ever be with the Lord." (i Thess. 1V.
15-17.) Thus "them that sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him," and "when
Christ who is our life shall appear, then shall we also appear with Him in
glory." (Col.iii.3.) It is plain, then, not from the interpretation of a single
text, but from the plainly given character and "order" of the resurrection,
that the saints, dead or living when Christ comes, are caught up in one
glorious company to meet Him in the air; and when He appears for the judgment
of the world, they appear with Him. Thus, before judgment can possibly take
place, all is decided. Into judgment personally they do not come.
Yet
we shall all give an account to God, all be manifested before the judgment-seat
of Christ, and receive for the things done in the body. But it should be
already plain that the separative judgment of the sheep and goats cannot have
to do with us. And think of Paul, John, and others waiting to be picked out in
this way from unbelievers! Is Dr. Steele really waiting for this? I do not
think so. Why then a judgment to decide which does not decide?
No: all
is decided here. Here men are lost or saved, and he that believeth on Christ
shall not come into judgment, but is passed out of death into life. And that
life is eternal life: "I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never
perish, neither shall any one pluck them out of My hand." (Jno. X. 28.)
Those who would put conditions or exceptions into such texts as these should
mark that they belong to a class into which these never are put. There is many
an "if" in Scripture : when professing Christians as such are addressed, they
are often tested in order to prevent the fatal deceit which men may practice on
themselves; but never are those singled out and pronounced upon as having
eternal life, or salvation, or justification, or being born again, or children
of God, or any thing analogous to these, put under conditions, as if it were
doubtful how they would turn out. This is surely noteworthy, and should go far
itself to establish the truth. If Scripture makes no doubt, should we? But we
can say much more than this. In every way, from every side, we are thronged
with assurances as to the safety of the saint.. . . . .
If
justified, or reconciled, much more shall he be saved.
If he has eternal
life, he shall never perish.
If born of incorruptible seed, his seed
remaineth in him.
Whom He calls He justifies, and whom He justifies He
glorifies.
If the apostle speaks of apostasy, better things accompany
salvation.
If a man draw back, we are not of them that draw back.
Neither
things present nor to come can separate from God's love in
Christ.
Conversely :- -
He that loveth not his brother is in
darkness even until now.
They who go out from us are proved by the fact not
to have been of us.
Because the plant has no root, it withers away. He that
sinneth hath not seen Him, neither known Him.
I never knew you: depart from
Me, ye that work iniquity.
What avails it to interpolate certain texts with
conditions, when this is the web and woof of Scripture? What profit indeed in
limiting the wonderful grace of God which pledges itself in Christ to the poor
and helpless, beggared in self-assurance. "I will NEVER leave thee, nor forsake
thee." Blessed, blessed grace! without it, who that knows himself could have
peace a moment?
Sad would it be, then, to find that the more this grace
abounds, the more man will abuse it. It is not so the apostle speaks. "Sin
shall not have dominion over you, because ye are not under the law, but under
grace." (Rom. vi. 14.) The real knowledge of grace it is that is the spring of
holiness, as the "strength of sin," on the other hand, "is the law." No doubt
there are those who, secretly or openly, would make God's precious grace a
cover for licentiousness. No doubt also there are many who, through lack of
knowledge of deliverance, find to their sorrow the law of sin authoritative, to
the blighting of their practical life and testimony for God. Yet all true
Christian experience agrees with, if it is not needed to confirm, the apostle's
testimony. We must not slight grace because men have little learned or abused
it. We must not supplement it with legal conditions in order to make it
effectual. We must hold it more simply and learn it better.
Grace
cannot assimilate with legal conditions. It is their essential opposite. "If it
be of grace, then it is no more work; otherwise grace is no more grace." (Rom.
xi. 6.) No relaxation or modification of law can make it assimilate with it. As
to moral content, the law is holy, just, and good. As a principle of
fruitfulness, it is a necessary, fully announced failure. The Christian is dead
to and delivered from it, not that he may be justified merely, but that he may
bring forth fruit to God.
Baptize it as you may, you cannot make it
Christian. Relax it, you have spoilt it as law without making it gospel. Call
it, without warrant, the "law of Christ," your apparent scripturalness will not
hinder the necessary result of an adoption of what is not of Him. "The law is
not of faith; but the man that doeth them shall live in them." (Gal. iii. 12.)
Now the gospel most surely requires obedience to it, and Christ's commandments
admit no relaxation and lack no authority. But commandments and obedience do
not constitute law in its essential principle, its absolute contrast with
grace. And grace is the one power for holiness, the only thing that can deliver
from the dominion of sin.
A moral law supposes a sinner as the one to
whom it is given, and it works by the influence of fear, its authority being
maintained by penalties. It requires: it does not enable for the requirement.
The fulfillment of the law is the thing impossible to the law.
This is
what the apostle insists on in Rom. viii. 1-4, which Dr. Steele so little
understands, that to him it makes no difference whether you find "who walk not
after the flesh but after the Spirit" appended to the first verse or the fourth
! (p. 153.) If the words be found, what matter the connection in which they are
found? Certainly no matter, if Scripture be a collection of fragments without
relation to one another If a relative clause even does not depend upon its
antecedent, then indeed it is no matter. But if sentences acquire any meaning
from their relation to one another, then it does surely make a difference
whether our walk as Christians be introduced into the question of "no
condemnation" or into the statement of how grace enables us for what is
impossible to the law.
"For what the law could not do, in that it was
weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful
flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteousness of the
law may be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh but after the
Spirit."
The law says, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God," and the
conscience approves this; but though it say, Do this, or thou shalt die, the
terrible alternative can never prevail to set my affections on Him from whom
they have wandered. " We love Him because He first loved us" (i Jno. iv. 19) is
the Christian experience of grace as certified by an apostle, fulfilling in us
the righteousness of the law. Sin in the flesh is condemned for us in that
cross of Christ on which He died to redeem us, and thus we find deliverance
from the condemnation and the power of it together.
Now if this be the
principle of Christian fruitfulness, we must adhere to it consistently. The
effect will not be found except as we allow that to act which will produce the
effect. It will not do to mingle grace and law,- that is, to cancel the grace
by an inconsistent addition to it,- and then declaim against grace as if it
were itself unholy. It is thus, in fact, with a large number of those who
professedly accept it. On the other hand we must of course distinguish grace
from laxity - from the result of an indifferent and careless spirit which may
use the language to cover its laxity.
"The law is not of faith," and
faith is the character and power of the child of God as such. It is the working
principle, so that the faith which has not works is dead,- it is not true faith
at all. With all our heart we accept and emphasize this teaching of the
apostle. With all our heart we reject Dr. Steele's assertion for us, that "its
efficacy is concentrated into a single act of assent to a past fact." (p. roi.)
Such statements scattered through his book, proved by fragmentary sentences no
one knows from whence, are a dishonour to the one who makes them. Our author
who claims so much for law should heed the law. If a witness is put upon the
stand in any court of justice worthy to be called one, he is first asked his
name, and where he belongs. Dr. Steele seems to care nothing, and to argue that
his readers will care nothing for these things, without which his book is,
however, a mere string of unsupported assertions, and will be rated by an
upright mind as that.
On the contrary, faith is the character of the
new nature, necessarily continuous as such, and the working principle in every
one who has it. Nor does it only "grasp past and finished acts" (p. 59), but
cleaves first of all to a living Saviour. "For you are all the children of God
through faith in Christ Jesus." (Gal. iii. 26.) Instead of setting aside faith
in the way charged, I would press it as of all importance in the question
before us. It would be a sad and terrible thing to be told that faith might
justify and yet not purify. We have read our Bibles at least enough to know
that the heart is purified by faith (Acts xv. 9), and we believe and thank God
that it is so.
But "the law is not of faith:" it does not appeal to or
recognize it. Its principle, fear, tormenting fear, is not in love: "there is
no fear in love, but perfect love casteth out fear, because fear hath torment."
(I Jno. iv. i8.) Our author uses often enough this text no doubt: has he
apprehended its significance in this respect? Does he remember, not only that
faith it is that worketh, but that "faith worketh by love "? (Gal. v. 6.) How
is it, then, that this works, where he upholds as the Arminian check upon sin,
the knowledge that "the holiest saint on earth may fall from grace, and drop
into hell "? Is it not already one fallen from grace who can think and speak
so?
Is this the grace which does not allow the dominion of sin? Is the
fear that hath torment banished by it? Does it not rather make it a thing
impossible to be banished by the holiest saint on earth? Nay, is it not openly
contended that "human nature in its best estate can never be safely released
from the salutary restraint of fear"? Is this the doctrine of Scripture, or an
open break with it?
Talk no more, then, of fruitless faith, while you
boast of a "perfect love" fruitless as any Antinomian faith could be! and while
you set aside faith as fruitless, to take up terror to do its work instead. 0
sir, your theology halts where it should walk upright; and your holiness of the
whip will never reach, nor come in sight of a "GENUINE CHRISTIAN PERFECTION."
With all my soul, I turn from the perfection you present to me, to realize, if
I may, that rest of faith which God's Word calls me to, and find a yoke for
which "the joy of the Lord," not the terrors of hell, can be "strength." If,
then, these are the divine principles of holiness,- if faith it is that
worketh, and worketh by love, and a perfect love is to cast out fear, then the
gospel of eternal security is also the gospel of holiness. We are set free from
self-care to care for Christ and serve Him. The things are wide as heaven and
earth asunder.
The more you work for salvation, the more you work for
self: is it not so? a sad and foolish work, breaking the Sabbath which God has
ordained, and for which He has provided. Please Him you cannot, while you set
aside the efficacy of that one peerless work which secures all for the
believer.
"The life which I live in the flesh," says one of old, "I
live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me. I
do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then
Christ is dead in vain" (Gal. ii. 20. 21)
CHAPTER
VI. SIN IN THE BELIEVER.
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