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p103 MY DEAR SIR, - I have received your tract, and am glad to have done so, as it affords me an opportunity to give a little more fully the scriptural evidence of the Deity of the Lord. How much it pained me to read it, I cannot tell you; but I apply myself at once to the point. The rash expressions of individuals are nothing to the purpose: the question is, what does scripture say? No Christian denies he should pray to the Father, but it is equally certain the Lord is prayed to - nay, calling upon the name of the Lord Jesus is, so to speak, a definition of a Christian in 1 Corinthians 1:2. Stephen called on the Lord Jesus to receive his spirit, and Paul that the thorn might be taken from him. A child prays to his Father, but the administration of the house is in the Lord's hands.

It is a strange assertion that the scriptures do not say that Jesus is God: and I pray you to note that the question connects itself directly with that of What was He before He was a man? "The Word was with God, and the Word was God." "And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us." You will not deny that that was Jesus: did God, for such the Word was, cease to be God? He was "in the form of God," laid aside His glory, "and took upon him the form of a servant;" but He is called God: Jesus is Emmanuel, God with us. (Matt. 1:23.) The scriptures do therefore call Him God. Again, Jesus means Jah, or Jehovah the Saviour; His name states that He is Jehovah: is not Jehovah God? Jesus received it, because He was to "save his people from their sins" - whose people? Hence, in John 12, the evangelist cites a passage from Isaiah 6, where the highest glory of Jehovah is displayed, and says (ver. 41) the prophet saw Christ's glory and spake of Him. Hence the Lord says to the Jews, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up."

Your question as to the Son of David is nothing to the purpose; no one says God is the Son of David: all Christians own that Christ was born into the world as a man: what they say is that the Son of David was also God. Take the end of 1 John 2 and beginning of 3 - in chapter 2:28, "he shall appear;" that is, Christ: in verse 29, saints are "born of him;" but they are "sons of God" in chapter 3:1; but the world "knew him not": that is, the same Person is Christ on earth. In verse 2 we are "the sons of God," but, "when he shall appear;" now it is Christ. No one can read this passage and not see that Christ and God were one Object or Person before the apostle's mind; and so at the end of the epistle, "We are in him that is true, that is, in his Son Jesus Christ: this [He] is the true God and eternal life." And even the Old Testament knows this. In Daniel 7 the Son of man comes to the Ancient of days (ver. 13), but further on in the course of the chapter, the Ancient of days comes. (Ver. 22) So in Revelation 1:17: "The first and the last" is "he that liveth and was dead." In chapter 1:8, Alpha and Omega is the Almighty; in chapter 22:12, 13, it is Christ who comes. In 1 Timothy 6:14, 16, "the blessed and only Potentate" is "King of kings and Lord of lords," but in Revelation 19:16 this is Christ. In John 17. He looks to be glorified with the Father, but He had had it before the world was. What He says is that He does and can do nothing as originated by Himself, ἀφ᾽ ἑαυτοῦ (John 5:19) The same is said of the Holy Ghost (chap. 16:13), "He shall not speak of himself" - ἀφ᾽ ἑαυτοῦ "from himself" as a source. No Christian denies He took the form of a servant, and always so lived on the earth: but who "took upon him the form of a servant"? Not an angel; he is a servant, and cannot leave his first estate. Christ "made himself of no reputation" when He was in the form of God: was it a false form? The Lord forgive the question: I put it for your sake, dear sir. He could say, "before Abraham was I AM." The fulness of the Deity, you admit, dwelt in Him. The Son of David was much more than the Son of David: "God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself." Whose thoughts and words were Christ's? were they not a man's, yet whose? He could say "the Son of man who is in heaven." What was He before He came down? Was the Word which became flesh (σὰρξ ἐγένετο) before [He became so] God or not?

Proving He was Man, proves nothing; we all believe it as fundamental truth: but was He only a man? Clearly not: He was "the Word:" He "came down from heaven." What was He then before He became a man? He claims to be One with the Father (John 10:30) - can a creature? If He was not a creature He was God; or we have one not created at all, of independent existence in Himself, yet not God, which is confusion and impossible. "By him were all things created:" who did that? He is the Firstborn of the creation, because He created it: all things, moreover, consist by Him. (Col. 1:16) He was "in the beginning," and then by him were all things made that are made. (John 1:1, 3) He, then, was not made: are there two Gods? He laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of His hands; they perish, but He remains. (Heb. 1:8, 10, 11) All the angels of God are to worship Him. (Ver. 6) "Blessed are all they that put their trust in him" (Psa. 2:12), but "cursed be the man that trusteth in man." (Jer. 17:5) He and the Father are one: can any creature say that?

I find, then, that He is called God before He came into the world (John 1), after He came into the world - "God with us." He created all things, and "by him all things consist," is to be worshipped as the first and the last, Alpha and Omega - which is the express title of the Almighty, King of kings and Lord of lords, the Ancient of days: and, lest we should think Him some inferior God, we are told that all the fulness of the Godhead (θεότητος) dwelt in Him bodily. (Col. 2:9) The moral teaching of scripture confirms it. "Christ is all" to the Christian, so that if He be not God, God is nothing. The object of the supreme devotion of the heart, I am to live to Him (2 Cor. 5:15); is this to a creature? This is the real question: Is He the creature or the Creator? No Christian denies that He is true, very Man, and that He has taken a place inferior to the Father; but for this He made Himself of no reputation when in the form of God, and took upon Him the form of a servant: no creature could do that; he is one by nature.

He was, as you say, the foreordained Second Adam, but that Second Adam was the Lord from heaven. (1 Cor. 15:47) He came not to do His own will surely; as Man, obedience and dependence was His place, but He came into a prepared body having offered Himself to do it. You may say, He is Son of God. What do you mean by that? "Kiss the Son lest he be angry." God spoke ἐν υἱῳ (Heb. 1:1) The exaltation of Jesus, of which you speak, was after He had been "made a little lower than the angels [whom He had created] for the suffering of death," being "made like to his brethren in all things." He "maketh his angels spirits . . . but unto the Son he saith Thy throne, O God" - He does not make Him anything. Would the blood of a mere man cleanse from all sin?

How you can say the scriptures do not say He is God, I do not understand: they do over and over again, directly and indirectly, in equivalent terms. I have not quoted "God manifest in the flesh," "Christ who is over all, God blessed for ever," as critics may reason about them. The last, however (Rom. 9:5) is as plain a testimony as can well be conceived, and the language such as makes it impossible to apply it to any one but Christ. Is it not singular that you should have passed over all the passages I have referred to, and only quoted what shews that Christ was truly a man, which nobody denies - without which, indeed, His Godhead is of no avail to us? I cannot in the compass of a note pretend to discuss fully such a subject. But all scripture confirms the truth, that Jesus is Jehovah. John the Baptist was "the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord" - that is, Jehovah (Isa. 40): so Luke 7:27, from Malachi 3:1: so Luke 1:76: so when He says to the leper, "I will, be thou clean." In Isaiah 66:15 Jehovah comes with fire and the sword, but we know it is Christ who comes. What is the meaning of Micah 5:2? Who is Jehovah's fellow? (Zech. 13:7.) The cleansing of the leper was Jehovah's work: the feeding of the five thousand, a reference to the Psalms speaking of Jehovah; and though done as Son of man (Luke 9:10-17 and following) accomplished Psalm 132:15, spoken of Jehovah. He not only works miracles, which God can enable any one, if He pleases, to do, but He confers the power of working them by His own power on others, which man cannot do. (Luke 9) All these I refer to as confirmations of the direct statements of scripture that He is God, and they are consistent with no other doctrine. And they might be multiplied by reference to every page of the gospel. He quickens whom He will (John 5:21); can that be said of a mere man, a creature? The Old Testament declares that Jehovah was to come, and His way be prepared, but this was Christ. Hebrews 12:25, 26, shew positively that Christ is the Jehovah of mount Sinai.

I do not write in a controversial spirit, and beg you to weigh the passages, because it is the greatest of all comforts to know that God did thus come down and become a man - reveal Himself to us so near us. I know God in knowing Christ, find Him grace and love, and cannot in any other way know Himself. May the gracious Lord give you to see it!

[Date unknown.]

[53090E]

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